


An Eluvian Darkly

by wargoddess



Series: An Eluvian Darkly [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Anal Sex, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Frottage, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mage!Carver, Post DA2, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trip, Templar!Bethany, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-08 17:11:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carver is a mage in the Free Marches, trying to make his way back home to Ferelden.  Cullen has just slain Meredith, and with her his sense of purpose.  They journey together through a land descending into anarchy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously an AU, written pre-Inquisition and inspired by multiple posts and fanart images around Tumblr about what if Carver was the family mage and Bethany the natural-born-Templar. Alas, this will feature Bethany only via Carver's memories.
> 
> Takes place a few months after the end of DA2. In this universe Hawke was a warrior who went to fight at Ostagar and never returned. Carver, Bethany, and Leandra made it to Kirkwall amid the Blight, but things didn't go well. Meanwhile -- with no Champion to inspire him, Cullen turned on Meredith out of pure grim pragmatism and not the clear sense of Templar duty that canon-Cullen has by the end of the game. Then, as far as anyone in power knows, he vanished.
> 
> Oh -- and despite the title's mention of an eluvian, there isn't one (or Merrill) in this story. Just used it to evoke the "mirror darkly" trope. Despite the tags denoting violence and rape, there's only a passing mention of the latter. Quite a bit of the former, tho'.

     Cullen has grown inured to ugliness over the years.  Unavoidable, really; there are simply limits on what the mind can be shocked by.  After the fifth illegal Tranquil victim or the third raped apprentice or the first time one sees a young mage who has been methodically, intentionally beaten to death, the emotions grow numb.  The mind gives up the effort to make sense of it.  The prayers grow meaningless -- but he keeps praying anyway.  Without that, he truly will have nothing left.

     So as he walks through the dissidents' camp and notes first that they have captured several mages and second that they are clearly torturing them to death, he wastes no strength on horror.  He simply turns to the Templar who is showing him their prizes and grinning proudly, and draws his sword.  The Templar gasps and steps back and fumbles for his weapon, but Cullen cuts him down without batting an eyelash, and then does the same to his three companions.  He feels no horror as he does this, too, though one of them is from the Gallows and he vaguely remembers seeing her in Ser Agatha's class.  Her form is terrible, though, so she dies.  Should have spent more time in the training yard, and less in the back corridors learning how to use mages for sport.

     He keeps the sword in hand as he checks the mages, because he's done this before and he knows the danger.  Of the three mages in the cage, however, one is already dead -- eyes bulging, tongue out, tears dried on her cheeks.  The two still alive are in a bad way.  Hog tying:  lay the mage on his belly and tie feet to neck, with a short rope.  Place in a cage too cramped to allow him to roll onto his side; he must keep back and neck arched, or strangle to death.  When Cullen opens the cage and cuts the main rope on each, they flop and groan and suck in air.  And suddenly one of them is sucking _loudly_ and swelling and reddening, and his companion utters a strained croon that is the closest to a scream that his faded strength will allow.  He tries to flop away and can't even as the other mage -- the _abomination_ \-- begins to smoke and catch fire, so Cullen catches him by the back of the shirt and drags him out of the cage, dumping him on the ground and then stepping over him to stab the rage demon through the back of the neck.  It's enough, since the transformation isn't yet complete, and the mage-turned-demon dies at once.

     Shaking his head, Cullen steps out of the cage and faces the last surviving mage.  He is very aware of the sword naked in his hand, dripping with Templar blood and demonic ichor, and of the unsubtle threat this presents to a man who is visibly too weak even to crawl away.  It cannot be helped.  "Are you well?" he asks.

     The mage is a young man, and he does not at all look like a mage.  His tunic is rough-stitched leather -- poor man's armor -- that leaves his arms bare, and there's enough muscle in those arms that he's either been doing a _lot_ of staff-twirling, or he's a foundling:  an apostate discovered only recently, by chance or design, living a normal life beforehand.  If the latter, he's even more dangerous than mages usually are, because he is likely untrained.  Cullen's hand tightens on his sword-hilt.

     "Bloody _Void_ ," the mage croaks; his voice is hoarse, no doubt from hours of struggling to breathe.  He's trying to crawl backwards, but it's not Cullen's sword his eyes are fixed on; he's staring at the dead abomination.  "Bloody -- _Fuck!_ "

     _Language_ , Cullen thinks but does not say.  He takes a step closer, and the mage's eyes finally flick to him, widening.  They are very blue.  Demon blue?  " _Are. You. Well,_ " Cullen repeats, letting his intent edge his words.  And he remains ready.  If the mage means to ask a demon for help, it will be now.

     Instead, to his surprise, the mage begins to laugh.  It's weak, and bitter, and he half-rolls over as he does so, muscles trembling visibly as he tries to sit upright.  He only gets sort of halfway there, propping himself on one arm, but that he can sit up at all makes it obvious how he survived the torture:  he's simply stronger, physically, than the average mage.  He hasn't got much left, though.  "Oh, I'm s-sodding _fine_ ," the mage grates.  He glares at the dead abomination.  "Stupid arse.  He could've _lived_."

     "Demons promise life."  Cullen shrugs, turning to the demon and bending to rip a scrap of cloth from its not-quite-human-anymore arm.  It's obvious now that the surviving mage is no immediate threat, so he straightens and uses the cloth to clean his sword.  "It is not life as any of us would choose it, however."

     "Yeah."  The mage works his wrists, which bear the livid marks of the rope; his hands are stiff and disturbingly grayish in color, and he grimaces as if they hurt.  Then he eyes Cullen, blearily.  "Nnh.  You gonna Smite me?"

     Cullen sights along his sword to make certain he's gotten all the ichor off.  The stuff is corrosive; he'll need to clean it carefully tonight, if he wants to keep this blade.  "Should I?"

     The mage lets out another bitter laugh, glancing at a dead Templar near Cullen's feet.  " _Should_ didn't stop this lot."  But he closes his eyes, and Cullen's skin prickles; the mage is healing himself.  Not for long, as he slumps and exhales a moment later, depleted already -- but his fingers are twitching now, and their color returns as the blood flow resumes.

     Interesting.  Not an apostate -- or at least, not an untrained one.  Sheathing his sword, Cullen eyes the mage as he steps over to one of the Templars.  "You are a Creation specialist, then?"

     "No, bloody _Primal_.  I'm... hnh, I'm shit at healing, but... either that or ch-chop off my hands."  Flopping onto his side, the young man lets out a long exhalation of relief and weariness.  But his eyes, those inhumanly blue eyes, track Cullen from beneath heavy lids.  "You a slaver?"

     "No.  Merely a Templar who remembers the vows he swore to the Maker."  And most of this lot are out of Starkhaven, he notes from the etching on one breastplate.  _Nothing comes from Starkhaven but rogues and wastrels_ , Meredith always said.  Sucking his teeth, Cullen notes that the man's boots are in good condition and of a size; he sits and nudges their feet together to compare.  "You're free to go, when you recover.  I doubt you are a maleficar, and there is no Circle to put you in, anyhow."  No _safe_ one.

     There's no response, and Cullen looks up with a frown.  The mage has fallen asleep where he lies.  Cullen shakes his head to himself, then crouches to steal a dead man's boots.

#

     He sleeps poorly that night, in his armor, using the bedroll and tent of the man whose boots he took.  Sleeping in the armor is partly what does it, though he has done that enough lately that it shouldn't trouble him.  What does trouble him is the mage; he keeps waking in order to eye the man.  But the mage sleeps like the dead, not even making the small noises that they usually do during sleep, when the demons come to torment them.

     In the morning Cullen is bleary-eyed and achy, which makes him even more irritated that the mage has awakened before him.  The mage sits on a log huddled beneath a stolen cloak, cramming something into his mouth and pausing only long enough to swallow noisy gulps of water from the open canteen beside him.  No doubt the dissidents starved him in addition to amusing themselves with his slow strangulation.  He barely seems to notice when Cullen peers out of the tent at him, then shakes his head and kneels to pray.

     When Cullen is done praying, however, he finds the mage watching him, a wary look in his eyes even as he continues to stuff his face.  Cullen ignores him and heads behind a tree to manage his toilette.  When he returns, the mage has finally finished eating.  He's built up the fire and now huddles beside it, arms wrapped around himself beneath the cloak; the morning is chilly.  When Cullen crouches to rummage through the Templars' packs, the mage points to a small pile of parcels already laid out the other side of the fire, culled from the packs already.  "Food, valuables and such," he says, in a neutral tone.  "There's plenty."

     _And what did you do to it?_   Cullen wonders -- but that is paranoid of him.  The mage is still haggard from his ordeal, and where would he get poison?  So Cullen goes over to the pile, finding a slab of dried fruit, cheese rinds, and some wafers of pressed honey and nuts.  Standard Chantry rations for Templar Hunters.  But where did these men get it, if they were from Starkhaven?  Starkhaven's Circle has been defunct for years.

     A savory aroma catches his attention; he looks up to see a rabbit spitted over the fire.  The mage shrugs when Cullen frowns at him.  "They had snares all about, nearby.  Would've spoiled if I hadn't taken it.  You can have it.  I ate enough."

     A mage who knows how to dress a carcass.  The rabbit is nearly done, so Cullen hunkers down on a tree-stump to wait for it.  "You lived rough before the Circle?"  The mage is Ferelden, he's almost certain of it.  Perhaps from the Korcari Wilds -- though he does not look Chasind.

     "Never in a Circle.  I was a farmer."  The mage exhales, wrapping the cloak more closely about himself.  "We always had coneys on our back trace, eating up the cabbages, so I got used to eating them."

     Hmm.  "You learned healing to deal with farm injuries."

     A snort.  "No, I learned healing because my bloody father _made_ me learn healing.  I just wanted to throw rocks and lightning, but he wouldn't have it."

     "Your father?"

     "He was from the Kirkwall Circle."  Cullen lifts his eyes; the mage is staring at the fire, and doesn't notice.  "Escaped some twenty-odd years ago.  Taught me everything I know -- magic and living free."

     "I see."  Just as well.  The older mages of the Gallows mostly died during Meredith's rampage.  The Templars targeted the senior enchanters first, since they were the most powerful.

     The mage's smile fades.  "He's dead now.  Just before the Blight hit Lothering."  Then the mage looks up, his face hard.  "He Harrowed me, if you're wondering.  Had my bloody _sister_ standing by to kill me, if she had to."

     A mage Harrowing his own son?  But then, he supposes mages are the ones doing it in the Circles too; Templars just... assist.  Cullen shakes his head in wonder, still, and reaches out to test the rabbit.  It's mostly done; he rips off a haunch and sets to, licking his fingers in greed for the grease.  He's been on the road a long time.

     He knows by the mage's silence that questions are a-brewing.  What surprises him, however, is their nature when they come.  "What's it going to be, then?"

     Cullen snaps a thighbone and sucks on it.  "Hmm?"

     The mage makes a sound of exasperation.  "You taking a phylactery from me?"

     "No."

     The mage grows tense.  "You're _friends_ with slavers, then."

     For the Maker's sake.  "No.  I do not suffer that kind to live, when I meet them."

     There's a moment of taut silence.  "You got a brand, then."

     Startled, Cullen looks up.  The mage lifts his chin in a belligerent sort of way, but his eyes are very wide and bright with fear.  This, Cullen realizes, his heart too heavy to be called sad, is the wage of his sin:  Because he did nothing for so many years while Meredith turned the Gallows into a den of iniquity, now mages think every Templar is a ravening monster out to destroy their soul.

     "No," Cullen says, firmly.  "You have been Harrowed -- or so you say.  I see no mark of demonic influence upon you.  In any case I do not carry a _revered Chantry artifact_ about on my person."

     " _Revered._ "  The mage shakes his head.  "Bloody Chantry.  They revere the thumbscrews they used on the Dales elves, too?"

     This is unbearable.  "I am a defender of the faith, serrah," he says quietly, and the mage grows very still.  "I shall thank you not to insult it."

     "Not an insult if it's true, though, is it?"  The mage watches him, tense, ready to flee or fight.

     Cullen sets his jaw.  "Be that as it may.  If you have any respect for me as the man who saved your life, you will _refrain_."

     That works where veiled threats have not.  The mage looks chagrined, and slumps a little.  "Thanks," he mutters, finally.  He nods toward the bodies of the Templars and the two dead mages, which Cullen dragged into a pile on the far side of the camp the night before.  "For, uh, that."

     _I did not do it for you,_ Cullen thinks, but does not say.

     There's silence for a time.  Cullen eats the rabbit down to the bones; it's the most satisfying meal he's had in days.  He's no hunter, so the only meat he's had has been shreds of old horse or rooster in stews and such, when he has the coin to stay at a tavern for the night.

     (There was money in the dead Templars' belongings; rather a lot of it.  But he will not stoop so low.)

     When the meal's done and he has prayed thanks to Andraste for keeping him alive another day, he rises to leave.  "You are free to go," he says again, because the mage has tensed in alarm and shifted his hand under the cloak he wears.  Cullen feels no prickle of magic, but that means nothing; some mages can assemble a spell in the span of a breath.  "Walk in the Maker's light."

     The mage's expression is humbling:  disbelief, shock, relief, wonder.  As if he cannot believe that a Templar would do something so sensible, or so kind.

     That is a bitter thought as Cullen walks away.

#

     It's the next day.  Cullen's halfway to Cumberland and thinking of fire and blood as he walks, when he hears the most garish yelling behind him.  _"Oi, you -- weirdo!"_

     It's _the mage_ , he sees when he turns.  The mage who looks even less like a mage now that he has clearly helped himself to more of his former captors' possessions, including -- hmm.  A greatsword, strapped to his back.  He's _waving_ and trotting to catch up with Cullen, wearing a great foolish smile on his face.  There's no one else on this part of the road, but... still.

     "Thought I'd never catch you," the mage pants -- and then he stops, blinking, as Cullen draws his sword and levels it at his throat.

     "What is your intention, mage?"  It is ridiculous, unfathomable, that he's here.  After what he's been through, given what he knows of Cullen, he should want nothing more to do with any Templar.  Which suggests that this mage is up to no good.

     A muscle flexes in the mage's jaw.  "You're heading south.  Toward Ferelden, right?"  Cullen blinks, and the man takes a deep breath.  "You have the look, and the accent.  Thought maybe we could travel together."

     "No."

     "Why not?"

     Cullen is too floored to speak for a moment.  "I am a _Templar_ ," he says finally.  As if his breastplate and shield emblazoned with Andraste's Flame are not enough to advertise this fact.

     "And you're alone."  The mage looks him up and down, which annoys Cullen to no end, inexplicably.  "You look like you can handle yourself, sure, but even you have to sleep.  It's _safer_ , two instead of one."  When Cullen shows no sign of yielding, the mage sighs in exasperation.  "That lot you killed yesterday has friends, all up and down this road.  There's darkspawn, and those Tal-something Qunari fellows.  And a good deal of my kind, hungry and full of magic, with nothing to lose."

     Cullen has killed more than a score of men and monsters in the days since he left Kirkwall.  "Most of those will not care whether you're with me," he says, wondering why he's even bothering to be reasonable.  "And the rogue Templars will attack that much faster if they see me traveling in the company of a mage."

     "I look like a mage to you?"  The _mage_ lifts his arms, throwing the cloak back, and Cullen is forced to admit that no, he does not.  "I grew up outside the Circle.  I know how to act, and how _not_ to look; you'll never catch me wearing a sodding dress.  I can watch your back."

     Cullen lowers the sword, though he still shakes his head.  "Until there is trouble, and you must shed your guise to protect yourself with magic."  _And need rescue, should we be engaged against Templars at the time_.

     "Yeah, maybe.  But before that, I mean to lay a few fuckers open."  The mage shifts his shoulders, rolling his head as if to limber up, or to ease lingering pain from his torture -- and Maker but he actually _looks_ like he knows what he's doing.  "This isn't a _guise_.  It's me.  I can handle myself with a blade.  I mean, I'm not a _Templar Knight Captain_ or anything, but I'm decent." 

     Cullen's eyes narrow; the mage smirks.  But he supposes it is not a difficult thing to guess.  In the months that have passed since everything went to the Void in Kirkwall -- the Chantry destroyed, Meredith gone mad -- he has heard rumors of himself, complete with descriptions of his appearance.  It is altogether strange to know that mages think him a hero, while his fellow Templars curse his name... but that was the consequence he accepted on the day he drew sword against his commander.  He sighs.

     "If you are as accomplished as you say," Cullen tries not to snap, "if you are indeed a mage who isn't useless with a sword, then you have no need of me.  And I have no need of _you_."

     The mage takes a deep breath, and the muscles of his jaw work as he grinds his teeth.  "I was going to take ship to Ferelden from Starkhaven," he says finally, "but Tetty -- that was the one you had to kill -- wouldn't give up his bloody staff, and that's what got us caught.  Had twenty sovereigns for the trip, and those fucking Templars _stole_ it, but now I've got it back.  So... let me hire you."

     The Maker _is_ said to have a sense of humor.  "For _what_?"

     Abruptly the mage looks away, his big shoulders tightening; he shifts from foot to foot.  He looks ridiculous.  "Bodyguarding, I guess.  Sod all, what does it matter?  Ten sovereigns, here to Denerim."

     Cullen sheathes his sword and turns to go, so disgusted that he almost doesn't stop even when the mage curses and blurts, "Please!"  It is unbearable.  So he turns back and takes three steps and his nose is within an inch of the mage's before the mage even seems to know he's coming.

     " _No_ ," Cullen says again, in a quiet fury.  " _I let you go_ back there.  I saved your life, but do not presume me some mage sympathizer because of it.  What I did, I did because I honor the Maker, and myself, and all the Templars who died protecting your kind from yourselves.  Nothing more!"

     To his credit, the mage does not flinch, though he does stiffen up.  His hand twitches, and in an instant Cullen is ready to throw a Smite.  When he does, Cullen will _kill_ this accursed fool.

     "My little sister -- my twin -- was a Templar."  The mage says it so quietly that Cullen almost doesn't hear him.  "Took her vows in Lothering.  She... she used to tell me that mages shouldn't be alone.  That's why the Circles exist, you know, so mages can be together.  It's all gone wrong, but... that's why mages have Templars.  The demons get us when we're weak.  We need others around to keep us strong, or... or..."  He shrugs abruptly, helplessly.  "I don't think I'll make it on my own."

     And Cullen blinks, drawing back.

     It is a Templar's duty that the mage is asking of him.  Not in the usual way, but...  He _is_ still a Templar, in spite of all that has happened.  He does still feel the calling, even if everything else in his life has gone so very wrong.  And what manner of Templar would he be, if he refuses this most sacred of obligations?

     Not very much of one.

     Not a Templar at all, really.

     So, wordlessly, Cullen nods.  The mage inhales, looking somehow both relieved and grim at once.  "How much, then?"

     Cullen's lip curls.  "I shall never take so much as a copper from your hand."

     The mage actually rolls his eyes.  "Right, fine.  Then I'll pay our way, how's that?  At inns, on ferries and such.  We can split on food.  That work?"

     He dislikes it.  Still... he remembers doing the Gallows' books, back when that was his job.  In the Circles, a goodly chunk of the Templars' budget comes from fees paid by the nobles for the accompaniment of tame mages in war or consultation.  More is profits from the Formari shops; those bought his armor, though only Chantry funds were used for the Flame-emblazoned sword and shield and breastplate.  For the Circle to pay Templars is different.  Cleaner, somehow, for its impersonal nature.  But ultimately it is the same thing, is it not?  Mages paying Templars to protect them.  Ironic, given recent events.

     But.

     "I will kill you," Cullen says, searching the other man's face intently.  If there is a demon in him, there is a chance it will show itself.  "If ever you turn to demons.  If even _once_ I see you abuse your magic.  Is this clear?"

     To his shock, the mage smiles grimly.  "Magic will serve that which is best in me, not that which is most base."  It sounds like someone else's words; Cullen does not know them.  "I've stricter ideals than yours to live up to, Knight Captain.  But if I sink that far, then -- yeah, fine, do me in.  I'd _want_ you to, if it came to that."

     It is not an agreement; it is a truce.  But it is... acceptable.

     So Cullen nods again, not trusting his voice, and straightens, and turns.  The mage exhales behind him and says, "I'm Carver Hawke."

     "I do not care," Cullen replies, and starts down the road.  After a heavy sigh, the mage follows.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen and his new charge reach an understanding, of sorts.

     It begins to go wrong almost immediately.

     "Ugh," the mage says, stretching to tuck his hands behind his head.  They are ten miles farther down the road than they were when Cullen first agreed to this madness.  The road along which they walk -- a southerly extension of the Wounded Coast -- stretches high and winding over a jagged drop into the ocean.  The mage has been blissfully, deceptively quiet for these ten miles, doubtless to lull Cullen into a false sense of comfort.  "I sodding _reek_.  Guess sweating your life out does wonders for the pits."

     Cullen shrugs, disinterested.  Fear sweat does reek, but the mage should be glad he is still alive to worry over his personal hygiene.

     "Next inn we come to, I'm springing for a room and a hot bath."

     "No," Cullen says, without thinking.

     "What?  You worried about the bounty on you?"

     Cullen isn't -- and he didn't know there was a bounty on him, though he is not surprised to learn this -- but that isn't the point.  "We can bathe at the next turnoff down to the sea," he says.

     "Yeah, no, sea salt's sticky, and I don't like sand in my nethers.  That's not a real bath.  Anyway, the bounty's only a problem in places with a lot of Templars.  If we stop in some town that doesn't have a big Chantry, we ought to be fine.  Don't worry."

     The offhand bit of patronization is especially irritating.  " _I_ am not worried.  _You_ are a mage.  We will stop in no towns."

     The mage stops, and Cullen goes another ten paces before he realizes this was not a stumble.  "The Void's one got to do with the other?" the mage demands.  His stance has shifted, weight forward and chin gone stubborn with building belligerence.  "Me being a mage, and us getting a good night's rest and a scrubdown?"

     For the Maker's sake.  It is something he should not have to explain.  But then, the boy _was_ an apostate, so he tries.  "The reason Circles are isolated from the habitations of non-magical folk," he says, patiently, "is for the safety of both.  Should others realize you are an apostate, they may attempt to harm you.  Should they do so, _you_ may attempt to harm _them_ \-- and you have all the power of the Fade at your beck and call.  There is a greater likelihood you will resort to blood magic, too, when you face many enemies.  It is unsafe, and unnecessary.  No towns."  And because he might as well make the nature of their relationship clear now, before the boy gets any more ideas, he adds, "That is final."

     "That is _balls_ ," the mage says, his fists clenching.  "I've been _living_ in towns full of 'non-magical people' my whole bloody _life_!  You think I'm suddenly going to lose my shit and blow the place up because _you're_ with me?  You might make me want to, but I sodding _won't_."

     Cullen shakes his head, sighing.  "It is not a matter for discussion, mage."  He turns to go.

     "You're sodding right it isn't."  The mage grates out an angry breath.  "If that's how you want to play things, fine, I'm _un_ -hiring you.  Go the fuck on, then."

     Oh, that is quite enough.  Cullen turns back to him.  "Do you imagine," he says, speaking very quietly and slowly so the mage will know himself warned, "that you can simply walk away from me, now that you have placed yourself under my control?"

     The mage -- _Carver_ ; the name comes to Cullen's mind unbidden, though he has made no special effort to remember it -- inhales, his nostrils flaring in pure fury.  "I didn't place myself under your _control_ ," he says, just as quietly; Cullen blinks in mild surprise.  "I put myself under your _protection_.  That doesn't mean you sodding _own_ me.  I can do what I bloody well _want_."

     Well, Cullen supposes he should have expected this.  He shifts his weight a little, bracing himself to teach this upstart _boy_ a lesson.  "Do you imagine," he snaps, "that I will _allow_ you to?"

     He's ready.  The mage will throw a spell and Cullen will shut him _down_.  It must be strong enough to warn, though Cullen will pull the full force of the Smite, of course; he does not want to knock the mage unconscious.  He is not cruel.  He simply needs to make clear that his will must be obeyed.

     But Carver reaches up slowly, his eyes steel-hard and jaw set, to unsheath his sword.

     The _mage_.  Draws a _sword_.  On _Cullen_.

     "First blood," Carver says.  "Winner says whether we hit an inn at the next town. I'll Heal it, after, if I win."

     "Don't be a fool."  It is not polite, or charitable, but Cullen is _done_.  "For every hour you have put into learning magic, I have spent ten on swordplay.  And the instant you attempt to use magic -- "

     "I don't need any sodding _magic_ to put you on your sodding _arse_."  Maker, he sounds like he means it.  And Maker, the mage has taken a defensive stance that is -- it is actually _effective_.  Cullen's blood quickens in spite of everything, and his fingers itch for the hilt of his blade --

     -- no.  _No_.

     "A Templar does not draw his sword against a mage unless he means to kill," Cullen says. It is the first thing Greagoir taught him, and one of the few things he and Cullen agreed on.

     "Well, that's fucking stupid.  How are you going to learn to fight a mage if you never actually _do_ it, in sparring and such?"

     Cullen blinks.  But...  He's getting distracted.  "You're no match for me, mage."

     "Bloody _try me_."  There's no fear in the mage.  No sign that he is brewing some cunning plan, no shift of the eyes to indicate a trap or a feint or a distraction.  Just tight-held pure Ferelden fury, and something that might be battle-lust.   _But he is a mage_.  "I'll show you what I can do."

     _But he is a mage!_

     Cullen hesitates too long, and the mage bares his teeth.  That's the only warning before -- sweet Maker -- the mage _lunges_ at him, with so much force and speed that Cullen twitches in involuntary reaction, but he has not drawn his sword or unhitched his shield so he is _completely open_ to be run through.  And part of his mind twitches to throw the Smite he has readied but it is the _wrong reaction_ , to the wrong sort of attack, the mage has done nothing to merit that degree of response even though _he is a mage_ and mages aren't supposed to stab Templars with _greatswords._

     By pure instinct Cullen jerks himself out of the way, too slow and too gracelessly.  But the mage stops his attack short by a foot, and pulls back.  A feint -- one meant not to distract Cullen, but simply to show that the mage means business.  And to show him that --  Cullen stares in shock and the dawning realization that the mage could have killed him.

     This.  Mage.  _Could have killed him_.

     He is too angry, Cullen thinks as he finally unsheaths his sword, and brings his shield over his shoulder.  Too angry, when the mage has clearly asked for a sparring match and not a true duel; too angry, given that he is a Templar and this mage is his charge.  This is the sort of anger that makes a Templar _hurt_ a mage.

     He should probably do something about that.  Stop a moment and pray.  Warmup exercises, to cool his rage.

     "Prepare yourself," he says instead.  The mage _grins_ , and Cullen's rage sharpens to a fine point.

     Cullen charges forward; a shield-bash.  But the mage is already moving, twisting aside from Cullen's blow and coming 'round and _great Andraste that is his sword_ making that heavy, deadly whooshing sound.  But Cullen is moving too, angling his sword and lunging back, _not_ giving up ground but merely repositioning, so that when the mage's sword clashes off his at just the right angle and the mage's balance is thrown he bashes _again_ and the mage stumbles back.  But he does not fall, as Cullen had expected him too.  _Ready for me_ , he concludes, noting the set of the mage's feet.

     "You have fought Templars before," Cullen says, stepping back while the mage recovers.  Not that the mage needs much recovery time; already he's back in stance.  But this is time that Cullen needs as well, to analyze and assess, because suddenly the back of his anger has been broken.

     "My sister."  The boy begins circling him, blade held high and in a stance Cullen does not recognize, but it is easy to guess that another shield-bash will be easily shunted aside now.  He pivots to keep the boy in his range.  "And sometimes the ones at the Chantry in Lothering, back when I was first learning."

     "That was dangerous."  Cullen rolls his neck, sets his feet.  "A mage who is just learning magic can flare -- "

     "When I was first learning _the sword_."  Carver looks annoyed.  "Started that proper at twelve.  Was using wood before that.  Didn't come into my magic 'til I was fourteen.  'Til then -- "  He shakes his head and utters a bitter laugh.  "I was gonna be a Templar.  Guess the Maker thought that was sodding hilarious."  Cullen blinks in surprise.  But Carver shifts and Cullen tenses, his pulse speeding.  "Enough bloody talking."

     He comes, and it is stunning, but -- yes, the signs are all there.  The mage has indeed had good, thorough training from someone, or several someones.  His form is excellent, and his stances are solid, and if he gained just a bit more muscle to put behind his strikes he would be terrifying on the battlefield.  There is _potential_ here, in spades, and Cullen finds himself approving as the battle grinds on.  (Because the mage is holding his own.  Cullen's pulling his blows but not his speed, and the mage can _handle_ it.  Cullen's actually getting a good workout.  It feels...  It has been a long time.)

     "Stop," he says at one point, and the mage pulls back at once.  He's panting harder than Cullen; hasn't fought in awhile, plainly, and perhaps is still recovering from his treatment by the dissidents.  Even more impressive.  But --  "Your footwork has grown sloppy.  Are you tired, mage?  Do you wish to end this?"

     "Nobody's blood's drawn yet," the mage says.  But he grins as he says it, with an expression of such joy and ferocity that... that Cullen cannot help a tight smile in reply.

     "Very well," he says, and decides to show the mage what a Knight Captain can do.

     So he throws another bash.  A distraction, and the mage knows it, but he still must answer it or be knocked to the ground, and that is what Cullen counts on.  So when Carver with his sloppy footwork sets himself to shunt the shield aside, his balance is slightly off, and it is so easy for Cullen to simply sweep his poorly-placed ankle.  The boy doesn't go down -- his footwork isn't that bad, he's just tired -- but he stumbles on the withdrawal, and it is a simple-enough matter for Cullen to step forward and draw a light slash across his bicep.  "Blood," he calls, and the boy curses but lowers his blade obediently.

     _Good discipline_ , Cullen thinks, and then frowns to himself in consternation.  He hitches his shield, and rummages for something to clean his blade with, and uses that moment to try and understand what he is feeling. 

     But Cullen's not looking at the mage, not really thinking of him, and so it's a raw, riveting thing when magic chill-prickles over his battle-heated skin.  His mind locks and his muscles twitch and he's already turning, already baring his teeth, already throwing the Smite.  It hits the boy like a satchel of stone.  Carver utters one startled, guttural cry, and then he's on the ground, knocked flat more powerfully than anything Cullen could have done with his shield alone. 

     For a moment Cullen is equally stunned, his mind primed for battle, his eyes belying his mind.  Part of him recognizes that the mage was just Healing the scratch on his arm, and that Cullen has overreacted.  The other part of him whispers that he should Smite the mage again, and _again_ , put him down and keep him down and make him know the fullness of Cullen's power.

     He is himself enough to inhale in shock at this impulse.  But that is a matter for later contemplation.

     The boy is still on the ground when Cullen goes to him, and Cullen's stomach clenches as he realizes just how much damage he's done.  Carver has actually grayed out, and when he turns his head, groaning, Cullen sees dampness and sand sticking to his hair.  Just a little blood, but still. Hurriedly Cullen goes to his pack and fetches his canteen and a rag, coming back and wetting it and pressing this to the back of Carver's head.

     "Fuck off me," Carver says in a blurry sort of way, and it is weak and angry but at least he's coherent, so some of Cullen's tension eases.  When the mage shifts, Cullen helps him upright, and it is a relief to see his blue-eyed glare.

     "What the Void was that?"  Even being semiconscious cannot stop this mage's insolence, apparently.  "Trying to make me mind you?  Show me who's boss?"

     Cullen grimaces.  "It is, perhaps, why mages and Templars should not spar together," he says, and oh, that is weak sauce.  But maybe there's truth in it, too.  "I am... unused to experiencing a mage's magic without hostile intent.  It was a reflex -- "

     "It was balls!  You called blood.  The match was over.  There was no sodding _need_ for that."

     It is true.  Cullen steels himself.  "You have my most sincere apology."

     To his great relief, Carver seems to accept this, though he grumbles and reaches back to bat at the wet compress Cullen's trying to keep on his head.  "Leave me alone.  I'm fine."

     "You are still bleeding -- "

     "And I've had worse.  Sodding get off me!"  So Cullen sighs and takes the compress away.  Carver fingers the injury and mutters imprecations.  Clearly he's little the worse for wear.

     So Cullen sighs and stands and wipes his sword clean with the other side of the compress, then sheathes the blade and reflects that this would never have happened if they were in a proper Circle.  Meanwhile, Carver gets to his feet, swaying alarmingly.  "Perhaps you should Heal yourself," Cullen advises, without thinking.

     The mage's look is withering.  "Well, I bloody _can't_ , now, can it, since you bloody _Smote away my magic_ , you bloody Templar _bitch_."  And then he is walking away, unsteadily but definitively, snatching up his pack and shouldering it on and still cursing Cullen's name and unknown ancestry under his breath.

     Cullen falls in behind him, sighing and wondering whether this is the Maker's punishment upon him for killing Meredith.  It is certainly fitting, if so.

#

     By evening the mage is clearly fine, and when a small town comes into view it is Cullen's unspoken apology that they turn off the road and head into it.

     The inn is not far from the highway, and looks clean enough.  The innkeeper throws a frown at Cullen's breastplate, however, and says, "We've only one room, gentlemen.  You'll have to share if you want it.  Got two beds, though."

     _What is that all about?_ Cullen wonders, but Carver sighs and says, "Fine," and hands over two silvers.  He adds another for towels and access to the inn's bathhouse, takes the key, and they head upstairs.

     "Nobody likes a solitary Templar," the mage says, quietly, as they inspect the room.  Cullen has flipped back the sheet to peer at the mattress for signs of bedbugs; nothing so far.  He blinks, however, and straightens to frown at Carver, mildly annoyed that the mage noticed his earlier consternation.

     "I would think," Cullen says, "that a solitary Templar is safer to have about than a group."  _Like that group that captured and tormented you_ , he does not have to add.

     "No, no, the solo ones are just as bad, usually.  Those are the ones who'll snatch an innkeeper's daughter or son with the innkeeper none the wiser 'til the worst is done.  You can see a group of arseholes coming and hide your children.  You, though.  You're so bloody _quiet_."  He sighs.  "Guess the innkeeper figures if you're rooming with me, you'll be less likely to get up to mischief on your own."

     He is fingering the back of his head again, with an irritable look on his face that implies a headache, and Cullen blinks to see that his arm is still cut too, though crusted now with dried blood.  "Perhaps you should Heal yourself, mage."

     If anything, the mage looks _more_ irritable.  " _Carver_. If we're supposed to be keeping it quiet that I'm a mage, so I don't _blow up the town_ or whatever, maybe try not tossing the word out every other _sentence_."

     It is churlish of him to get angry because the mage is right, though he does.  It rankles enough that he decides on a compromise, rather than capitulating to the mage's wishes. _"Hawke._ "

     The mage -- Hawke -- Carver -- shakes his head, then grimaces.  Definitely a headache.  "And I can't.  Heal myself."  He goes over to sit on one of the beds, hauling off his boots.  "Magic hasn't come back yet."

     It's been at least four hours.  "A single Smite should not have affected you so."

     "Yeah, well, I'm special like that, I guess."  He rises and stretches, then grabs his towel.  "Back in a bit."

     "A moment," Cullen says, looking around.  The room has no armor rack, so he sighs and begins removing it, setting the pieces in order on the floor.  He can clean it later.

     "One of us needs to stay here.  Inn like this will be lousy with lockpickers."

     Must they go through this every time?  Cullen sighs and turns to him.  "You have just said that you are bereft of your magic.  It is my duty to defend you."

     "Oh, for fuck's sake, not this again."  It's so close to his own exasperated thought that Cullen falls silent in surprise.  Carver sits again, scowling.  "Look.  You need to know:  I'm a _shit_ mage.  All right?  That's why my magic's not back -- because my mana reserves are pathetic and it takes me forever to regenerate what little I've got.  Your sodding Smite will probably have me useless 'til tomorrow morning.  See?  So if you're worried about me being the sort of fellow who _relies_ on his magic..."  He lets out a bitter laugh.  "Don't.  I know better, trust me."

     It is something Cullen has trouble bending his mind around.  Mages are mages.  He has never seen any reason to consider gradations of threat among them; they are all dangerous.  "Practice would deepen your reserves," he says automatically, habitually.  "Speed your ability to recover."  Magic is like any other skill, like a muscle; it must be flexed regularly if it is to grow stronger.

     "I practice.  Enough.  My father made certain of that."

     Cullen narrows his eyes.  "I have not seen you practice since I rescued you, Hawke."

     At once the mage is sulking, a glower on his face that is ninety percent Petulant Boy and only ten percent guilty.  "Didn't need to."

     Suddenly many things become clear.  Cullen drops his greaves, steps out of his boots, and begins to unhitch the chain.  "You said that you were fourteen when the magic came upon you."  Old for it, but not unheard-of, and boys did tend to be late bloomers.  But fourteen is late enough for a boy who has chosen his path in life to progress well down it, and then have trouble turning aside when that path closes.  "You blame the magic for ending your hopes of a career in the Order."

     "How'd you sodding guess?  Bunch of mind-readers in the Order these days." 

     He's glaring at Cullen in the most sullen way, and suddenly Cullen sees in him every Templar recruit he has ever trained.  No; no.  If Carver has been Harrowed, and is well into his twenties as he looks, then he is the equivalent to a knight -- a junior one, still building his strength, still finding his purpose in the oath and Flame.  Had the magic not come upon him, that is what he would have been by now.

     Except. 

     A junior knight would not have suffered as this boy -- this _man_ \-- has suffered.  It is there, in the interstices of Carver's crude language and his inappropriateness and his belligerence, and the mere fact of his solitude:  he has lost everything.  A dead father, he mentioned; what of his mother?  Perhaps gone too.  And his sister, for whom Carver would clearly have moved Thedas and the Fade.  How?  It does not matter.  All of it is lost, down to whatever future he'd once dreamt of.

     Carver narrows his eyes.  "Sodding _what_?  I don't like the way you're looking at me."

     Cullen snorts.  "It was you, I think, who said that you could do as you pleased.  May I not do the same?"

     "Not _to me_."

     Ah.  Cullen winces, recognizing the mage's sudden defensiveness now.  "I would never touch you in that fashion uninvited; have no fear on that account."

     He gets the gambeson off and exhales to be free of the weight of metal for the first time in days.  It is chilly in the room and he feels oddly naked without the gear, which is perhaps why the _lascivious_ look that has come over  the mage's face suddenly catches Cullen up short.  And Carver is looking Cullen up and down again, not in the way of a warrior assessing another of his kind like before, but --  And now the mage is smiling in a slow, approving way. 

     "What if I do invite you?" he asks.

     It has been so long since anyone flirted with him that Cullen hardly knows what to do with himself.

     _But he is a mage._

     So Cullen just stands there, hotfaced and troubled, and after a moment the mage laughs -- not cruelly -- and gets up again.  "Let's go," he says.  "I'm bringing our coin with us, but I suppose we'll just have to hunt down and kill anyone who steals the rest." 

     He heads for the door, and Cullen is left in his wake to think _I know not at all what to make of you_.  But then Carver stops on the threshold, looking back at Cullen expectantly, and Cullen can do nothing but fall in alongside.


	3. Chapter 3

     No one steals their belongings while they are in the bath. 

     The bath itself is nothing special:  rough scrub-brushes and harsh ash-and-fat soap, icy water for rinsing and barely lukewarm water for soaking.  Cullen goes through the motions without thinking; it is no different from a thousand mornings that he spent in the barracks before making officer, save that back then he had those baths every day and lately he has gone weeks without.  (A distant, disinterested part of him reminds that cleanliness is of the Light, and a defender of the faith should never go filthy for so long.  The rest of him does not care about this anymore, just as it no longer cares about anything else.)  It takes two complete head-to-toe scrubbings before the worst of the dirt is out of his skin, and even then some of it is just too ingrained.

     He does take the chance to examine the mage, surreptitiously, for any signs of demonic possession:  markings or deformities that indicate the first stage of physical transformation, injuries which might have been caused by the mage's struggles as the demon took over, anything untoward.  There are bruises here and there mottling Carver's pale skin, but any of those might have been Cullen's doing, with a shield-bash or that accidental Smite.  Beyond that Carver is smooth-skinned and surprisingly well-built for a mage -- but then that is not surprising, given his history.  (Cullen still hears the heavy, ominous _whoosh_ of Carver's sword, and shivers, not unpleasantly, with the memory.)  A bit more hollow in the midriff than he should be, though he has clearly eaten well until lately.  There is a tattoo on his left arse-cheek which makes no sense:  a crude Fereldan mabari, which Cullen has heard is worn by survivors of the army who fought at Ostagar.  Otherwise he is hale and wholesome, long-legged and strong, and for just a moment Cullen remembers what it was to look at a mage and feel desire.  Most of their kind are too dough-soft or thin for his tastes, but Solona was lean and strong because she practiced for hours each day with her staff, and Carver is --

     No.    

     Carver notices Cullen watching at one point, and his expression turns thoughtful.  Cullen looks away.

     They wash their clothing in the dregs of the scrubwater.  Cullen will not be indecent, so he puts on the wet shirt and trou, but Carver snorts and twists the towel 'round his hips and heads out of the bathroom half naked.  There's a back stairwell, at least, used by the inn staff, and Cullen apologizes their way through it.  "No apology _needed_ , serrah," says the scullery girl, craning her neck for a look at Carver as he passes.  The scullery boy is looking too, and Cullen feels odd about this.  It is his duty to protect Carver, but not from ogling, and not from the mage's own utter lack of propriety.  Still, he stops in the scullery door, and asks the girl to have someone bring up their dinner since they cannot come to dine in proper attire.

     She stares at him so intently while he talks that he wonders if he has said something untoward.  "Are you a prince?" she blurts, when he is done.

     He stares at her.  "No, serrah."  He almost adds, _I am a Templar_.  But he clenches his teeth against the words because he remembers the look the innkeeper gave him, and the way others have looked at him in villages and farmsteads along the road, and because he thinks of how he found Carver, trussed up and gagging on his own fear.  That.  Is what people think when they hear _Templar_ , now.

     (It is unbearable.  Yet he bears it, because he must.)

     The girl giggles, blushing.  "Sorry.  You just sound like a prince, is all."  She leans forward to rest her hands against the edge of the folding table, and it is not an accident that this seemingly relaxed gesture brings her breasts up and her cleavage forward.  "Want me to be the one who brings your meal, serrah?"

     Oh, for mercy's sake.  "If you like," he says, turning away, "but I or my companion may be sleeping.  Just knock and leave it outside the door, if you please."

     Her disappointed sigh, and the scullery boy's snicker, follow him up the stairwell.

     They settle in, and eat when the knock at the door comes; Carver is the one to fetch the basket, smirking at Cullen's reluctance.  The fare is excellent:  good dry cheese, a loaf of crusty bread with eggs baked in, and instead of the expected stew there is a pile of roasted and herbed root vegetables.  It's good to have real food again.  It's good to feel full.  And when Cullen settles onto the bed, which is so marvelously soft that aches he's grown inured to fall away, he realizes:  it is good, very good, to rest.

     Of course the mage cannot leave it undisturbed.  "So what's your story?"

     Cullen can at least close his eyes.  If he falls asleep, it will teach the mage not to bother him.  "You know my story."

     "I know the stories people tell about you."  He hears the mage shift on the bed and can imagine his position:  sitting crosslegged in the middle of the mattress, one hand propped on his knee, elbow aggressively and gracelessly jutting up.  That would befit him.  "You were Meredith's monster, her most loyal and terrible servant, once.  She pointed at a blood mage and you tore that one apart with the Maker's name on your lips.  You were the Chantry's poster boy, worse than every other Templar in that Void-hole you call the Gallows, because you _believed_."

     It is not wrong.  Surprising and disturbing to hear it framed this way, but... not wrong.  _Was_ he worse than Alrik, who Tranquil'd mages for pleasure instead of mercy?  Worse than Karras or the others who raped anyone suspected of blood magic, ostensibly to test the mages' willpower but really just to gratify their own urges?

     Yes.  Cullen is worse.  Because he knew what sort of men those were, and he knowingly turned mages over to their 'care'.  Because he knew of the abuses, the torment, the evil, and instead of stopping them, he told himself those things were good and right.

     _Because you believed_.

     "Then you turned on her."  The mage's voice draws him out of memory, and for an instant he is grateful.  "Suddenly you saw the evil of your ways, they say; suddenly you thought of us as people, where you hadn't before.  You _fought_ for us against Meredith herself, even as she'd become corrupt with magic.  And you won.  But then, when you had command of the whole Gallows, could've become Kirkwall's Champion, even Viscount... you walked away.  Disappeared.  And now I see where you've been:  wandering like a vagrant, killing bastards when they cross you, saving people like me -- and being really pissy about it, mind."  A sigh.  "So what's with that?"

     "Perhaps you would rather I had stayed in Kirkwall, and thus left you to die in those heretics' hands."

     A snort.  "They weren't _heretics_.  They claimed to be doing the Chantry's will."

     Which is the problem.  Templars are supposed to do the _Maker's_ will.

     "And maybe you _should've_ stayed in Kirkwall."  The mage doesn't sound angry.  Just thoughtful.  "You could've done the whole world a sight more good that way, with an army to do your bidding, than as one man with a sword."

     Cullen shakes his head, slowly.  "The Gallows was riddled with Templars like those who tried to kill you.  Such an army would be more of a horror than the anarchy we have now."

     "Maybe.  Maybe you could've controlled them, though.  I mean... you beat Meredith.  And now that I've seen you fight -- you're sodding amazing."  Cullen considers feeling pleasure at this praise, and does not.  He knows he's amazing with a blade.  It is the rest that's always so tricky.  "Maybe with you in charge, we wouldn't have a war at all.  Or -- "  And now Carver sighs, sounding weary.  "Or maybe it would've just been worse, like you say.  Fuck, I don't know.  But -- what's the point of this?  What are you trying to do?"

     Cullen thinks of the bath they just took.  The dirt so ingrained in his skin that even the hardest scrubbing could not get it out.  He thinks of the demon in Kinloch, leering at him, whispering that he would never be pure again after her touch.

     "Nothing," he says.  "I'm trying to do nothing."

     "Are the stories true, then?"

     "More or less."

     An exasperated sigh.  "Then... why?  Why did you suddenly change?"

     He's tired, and tired of the conversation.  He rolls onto his side, putting his back to the mage.  "What makes you think I did?"

     There's silence for awhile, and he dares to hope that the mage has taken his dismissal for what it is.  But then, after awhile, Cullen hears him sigh again.  "Well... thank you.  Whyever you did it."

     He does not want to care about a mage's gratitude.

     He sleeps, peacefully to his own surprise.

#

     In the morning he wakes to find the mage gone.  _Gone_.  It infuriates him.  He is up and dressed and nearly armored before it occurs to him to wonder _why_ he is so angry, and the shock of this thought makes him fumble his tassets and nearly drop them.

     After all, he would have let Carver go after rescuing him.  Did not want to travel with him.  Accepted him as charge only after Carver _begged_ for it, offered to pay Cullen to be his Templar.  If Carver has changed his mind, no longer wants Cullen's protection, then what does it matter?  Cullen never intended to accept his money anyhow. 

     _What's the point of this?_

     What, indeed?

     "Duty," he murmurs to himself.  The mage has asked for Cullen's protection.  The mage, who is barely a mage at all, who clings so tightly to his broken dream of being a warrior that he is in greater danger because of it, and who _knows_ this even if he will not admit it aloud -- needs Cullen.  And --  And --

     And it is the right thing to do.  Decisively, Cullen ties his tassets, pulls on his gauntlets, dons his sword.  That is all that matters anymore.

     Without a phylactery, he knows he will not find his charge by the usual means.  He heads down to the common room, meaning to find the innkeeper and ask if the man saw which direction Carver went, but stops short on the threshold -- because Carver is there having breakfast.  Not a runaway at all, then, just an apostate who is frustratingly accustomed to his own independence.  Cullen sighs.

     Only a handful of people are in the inn's common room.  The sun is well up; in a town like this that means most folk are already at work in craft-hall and field.  Everyone is tucking into porridge and tea; the smell of bacon hovers in the air, savory enough to waken a powerful craving in Cullen.  (He has not had bacon since the Gallows.)  Carver is easy to spot at a table by the fire, big shoulders relaxed as he lifts a mug and a big grin on his face as he listens to his companion -- a night watchwoman coming off duty, looks like -- talk.

     Cullen blinks, coming down from _alert_ to merely _oh there he is_.  But then he blinks again, taking in the way the watchwoman is leaning forward, and the easy warmth in Carver's smile.  Carver rests a hand on the table, casually, and the woman puts her hand on his.

     Inwardly Cullen sighs, and heads over to join them.

     Carver beams at the sight of Cullen, which is altogether disconcerting in itself.  The watchwoman smiles at him too, a bit shyly, and takes her hand off Carver's with a blush.  Then she notices the Flame on Cullen's chest, and her smile fades noticeably.  Others in the room have noticed, too.  He hears the ambient chatter soften, punctuated by whispers, and feels the itch of stares against his back.

     "'Bout time you got up," Carver says, good-naturedly, his voice unseemly loud in the stretching silence.  He pushes over an empty trencher and waves indiscreetly to the serving-girl, who nods and turns to dish up a bowl of porridge for Cullen.  She brings it -- and bacon, ah, the Maker is kind -- over as Carver grins back at the watchwoman, nodding toward Cullen.  "D'you know he prays in his sleep?  Sodding unnerving, it is, to wake in the dead of the night and hear _Blessed are the peacekeepers_."  He mock-glares at Cullen.  "Can't you just have a wet dream like a _normal_ fellow?"

     Cullen, in the middle of taking a seat on the table's opposite bench, glares at him.  But the watchwoman giggles and relaxes, and there is a subtle shift in the air of the room, and abruptly the whispering stops and the stares turn away.

     The rest of breakfast is uneventful.  The watchwoman, whose name is Hemire, eventually takes her leave of them -- but only after asking, while blushing, whether Carver means to stay in town another night.  Carver glances at Cullen, raising his eyebrows, which is rich given that the only reason they even came here was because Carver wanted to.  _Now you defer to me?_   Except it's not deference; it's Carver seeing if Cullen's all right with delaying their journey for a tumble.  Andraste's Flame.

     "I think we will probably move on," Cullen says, more to Carver than to the watchwoman, "but it is something we should discuss between us, I think."

     Carver sighs, but does not complain.  So the watchwoman makes her farewells, and Cullen bets himself a sovereign he doesn't have that she'll come by for dinner tonight to see if Carver's still about, and then Carver's smirking at him over his mug of tea.  "She's got friends, if you were feeling left out," Carver says.  "Sure we can charm up another pretty girl for you.  Or boy -- or both for that matter; whole sodding watch-garrison if we want.  Things are _really_ boring in town, Hemire says, so five's as good as one, yeah?"

     Cullen pours more tea.  "And if that woman has your child?  Out here in the hinterlands, with no one to oversee the training should your blood tell?"  He says it very quietly, mindful of listeners, but Carver flinches anyhow.

     "Well, good fucking morning to you, too," he mutters, hunching over his tea, but Cullen sees that his point has been made. 

     So soon they are back on the road toward Ferelden, and Carver is so quiet that Cullen thinks at first he is sulking.  But when Cullen bothers to glance at him, he sees a deeply troubled look on the other man's face.

     "That's right, isn't it," Carver murmurs at last, almost to himself.  "Any baby mages born now -- they've got nowhere to go when the magic hits them.  Nowhere safe."  There are a few Circles still in existence around Thedas, but all are worse than the Gallows now.  The Templar Order has seen the lesson of Kirkwall and interpreted it to mean _Do a better job of imprisoning your mages_.  The Tranquility brands, he has heard, are hardly given a chance to cool between uses.

     "Nothing to be done for it," Cullen says.

     Carver shakes his head.  "I thought of turning myself in to a Circle," he says, quietly.  "Father and I... we fought over that.  A lot. He'd escaped from the Gallows, like I said, and it wasn't even as bad then -- well."  Cullen feels the mage's uneasy glance against the side of his face.  "Bethy made me see that the only reason I was even thinking about it was because I was so bloody pissed at Father.  For... for making me a mage, see."  His voice softens, growing heavy with sorrow.  "I spent that whole last year of his life mad at him, wanting the opposite of anything he wanted, picking fights because it made me feel better.  He probably hated me by the end."  He sighs and shakes his head.  "Didn't make sense, but when has a boy that age ever?"

     Cullen lets silence be his answer.  Carver laughs a little, humorlessly.

     "Father told me I could do whatever I wanted once I was trained properly.  He said the Circles were harder on apostates brought in as apprentices; they'd be quicker to Harrow me, or make me Tranquil, or whatever.  Safer to go in, if I was gonna, with the skills in place."  He pauses and glances at Cullen.  "That true?"

     Cullen sighs and recites:  "Unmonitored rearing produces more maleficarum than being raised within the Circle.  Greater care must therefore be taken -- "

     Carver shakes his head.  "So, that's a yes.  Maker, I thought the old man was lying to me."

     Which is probably why Carver's father Harrowed him, Cullen reflects.  Self-hatred and denial were dangerous states of mind for a young mage; no doubt even a Circle runaway could see that.  That Carver had survived meant he at least had a basic amount of discipline.  In a healthy Circle, that would have been enough to keep him safe from demons.  On his own, however --

     _I don't think I'll make it on my own_.

     Yes.  Well.

     "Hey."  Carver turns to trot backward and in front of Cullen, grinning suddenly.  "Want to spar again?  Yesterday was fun."

     _I almost killed you_.  And yet, it _had_ been fun, and some part of Cullen quickens in interest.  Duty first, however.  They will see anyone else coming down the road, and Cullen can Silence Carver should anything get out of hand, so...  "First, I think you should complete the standard power-transference exercises for a pre-conjuration ritual, first through twelfth.  In order, please."

     Carver nearly stumbles, and the dismay on his face is comical.  "What?  Are you sodding kidding?"  Cullen just looks at him, and Carver groans aloud.  "Worse than my bloody _sister_ ," he grouses -- but then he lifts his hands and begins the exercise.

     It is illuminating.  The power that Carver channels is not insignificant; he's no candidate for First Enchanter, certainly, but he also isn't the 'shit mage' he thinks himself.  Someone -- his father, apparently -- has drilled him in this and other exercises until he can do them easily, however much he complains.  He is competent.  More than, in a few areas.  But as soon as the series of exercises is complete, Carver drops his hands and exhales.  "There, done.  _Now_ will you spar with me?"

     Cullen stops walking, frowning.  "Does it truly trouble you so, to wield a mage's power?"  Most mages Cullen has known thrill in willing fire or lightning into existence.

     But Carver looks annoyed, though he stops too.  "It doesn't _trouble me_.  I just _don't give a shit_ about 'wielding a mage's power'.  That's different, yeah?"

     "It is perhaps worse."  Cullen folds his arms.  "If you do not respect the power -- "

     "Oh, I sodding _respect_ it."  Carver sets his feet and faces him, glowering; Cullen suddenly feels pity for Carver's father, having to train this.  "Magic's the stuff that fucks up your life.  It means you don't dare join the army, even in the middle of a Blight when your country needs you, because the camp's got Circle mages about and you know they'd smell you out quicker than a skunk in a flowerbed.  It means you can't inherit property, can't marry legally, can't even _sleep_ right any bloody more -- and everyone hates you for it!"

     "That wasn't my meaning," Cullen begins.  Carver cuts him off by turning and flinging a perfect Stonefist at a nearby tree.  The tree's big enough that it merely shakes with the blow, but Cullen wagers a younger tree would've split at the point of impact.

     But then, if Carver practiced more, he would be able to bring down even the larger tree.

     "Yeah," Carver says.  "I take your _meaning_.  Power of the bloody gods at my fingertips, right.  Oooh, I could pull a Tevinter magister and take the fuck over!"  He throws up his arms melodramatically, and Cullen concedes that the idea _is_ rather ludicrous, in this case.  "Fat lot of good all that does when it's not what I _want_."

     He does not want to be curious, but he is.  "What _do_ you want?"

     "To get sodding laid without worrying that my bastards will end up having their brains branded out!"  He turns and storms off.  Cullen sighs, mutters a prayer to an avatar he's not sure he still believes in, and resumes walking after him.

     After a few dozen steps, which he hopes might be enough time for Carver to cool down, he tries again.  "A celibate life is -- "

     " _Fuck_ a celibate life!"

     Cullen coughs, Maker help him, and finally gives up.  They walk for the rest of the day without exchanging another whole sentence between them.

#

     They spend that night in an old abandoned farmhouse by a cave.  Cullen dislikes that the house is abandoned -- it's well-built, on what looks like fertile land, which implies that something _drove_ the prior occupants out.  So he splits the watch with Carver, taking the later shift because he does not trust the mage to stay awake, and of course not long after the witching hour he hears scritching against the walls and skittering across the roof and has just enough time to kick the mage awake before a handful of corrupted spiders attack.

     It's fine.  Cullen would have been able to handle them all on his own, really, but Carver is nicely deadly with his blade, and together they make short work of the creatures.  Still, Cullen notices something that troubles him.  He says nothing of it when they pack up and leave the house -- either that or sleep amid the stench of the monsters' corpses -- nor through that day's walking.  But he feels the lack of sleep keenly, and he sees Carver casting frowning glances at him all through the day, so he is not surprised when they pass a trading-post and Carver declares his desire for a bath and decent bed again.  Cullen can't even dredge up a real objection to the idea.

     But as they soak that evening in the post's surprisingly marvelous hot spring, Cullen levels a look at Carver, who is drowsy and blissful in the hot water.  "You are no longer a warrior," he says.

     Even in the heat, Carver blanches, lifting his head. "What?"

     Cullen shakes his head.  "Doubtless your sister tried to convey this to you; it is obvious to anyone who's sparred with you.  So either you did not listen to her or she was too gentle with your feelings -- "

     "Don't bloody talk about her," Carver says, tightly.  "You didn't know her."

     Cullen ignores this.  " -- but _I_ have no reason to lie to you.  You have the makings of an excellent warrior.  With sufficient time and dedication, yes...  But that is time you shall never have.  Not without neglecting your magic -- which you have been doing, I note."

     "I've been fucking practicing!"

     "Not _enough_ ," Cullen says firmly.  "Not nearly.  You hope to be a warrior who wields a bit of magic on the side.  _This is not possible._   What you are becoming instead is mediocre in both disciplines."

     The look on Carver's face is stark with hurt and fury.  His jaw flexes and Cullen expects him to spew everything from curses to fireballs -- though he has realized, by now, that Carver does not react as a mage ought.  He reaches for his sword in moments of danger, ignoring the weapon built into his very flesh.  During the spider attack, he did not call magic once, though it would have been useful.  That is a tendency Cullen is unwilling to indulge when both their lives depend on it.    

     After a taut moment, Carver hauls himself out of the spring and heads off.

     Cullen finds him later in the barn loft they've rented from the trading-post owner.  The barn's cozy enough despite the cold outside; its walls are well-insulated, and though they have to sleep through the smell and whickers of horses down below, it could be worse.  No beds, just bedrolls, but these are at least softer and thicker than the ones in their packs.  The loft has a tiny narrow window at one end, and Carver stands gazing through it, silhouetted by the moonlight. He's still naked, and Cullen hopes, probably in vain, that Carver at least put on trousers to walk from the bathhouse to the barn.  He hasn't bothered to light the lanterns.  Which he could do with a thought.  Stubborn, idiot mage.

     Cullen sighs and settles down on his bedroll -- in full shirt and trou and even socks, himself --  and is drifting toward sleep when Carver says:  "Mages killed my sister."

     Oh.

     Cullen turns his head and sees that the mage has folded his arms over his chest.  Cullen can glimpse his face only in profile, but there is all of the Void in it.

     "We were in Kirkwall."  The moonlight has leached the color from the loft, and the emotion from his voice.  "My uncle was there, helped us get settled in Lowtown.  After Ferelden, and the Blight, and my -- my older sister, I just wanted to forget everything.  Stop thinking.  Pretend that the last five years hadn't happened.  Bethy was worried about me.  I think... I think she wanted to turn me in to the Gallows.  She thought other mages would help me.  But she asked around and checked things out, and when she was done, she told me to stay away from the place. She didn't present herself there, either. Wanted no part of it."  He licks his lips.  "I went there myself once.  Figured... if I turned myself in, I wouldn't be a burden on her and Mother anymore.  But everything I saw..."

     Cullen knows what he would have seen.  "Yes."

     "Yes."  Carver sighs.  "So we joined a mercenary gang instead.  Nothing big.  Kept us in food and Bethy in lyrium.  But Bethy still wanted... still wanted to find a _place_ for me.  She hated seeing me unhappy, she said.  So she talked to people and found the Mage Underground.  We joined up."

     The tightening of Cullen's belly is immediate, reflexive -- and pointless.  To calm himself, he says, "Meredith smashed the Underground, that last year."

     "Yeah.  But that wasn't the problem."  His fingers, Cullen notes, are digging into his own arms.  If his nails were any longer or more jagged, there would be blood by now.  If he were any other mage, Cullen would wonder about blood magic.  Not now, though.  Not this one.

     "There were Fereldans in the Underground.  One of 'em, a new fellow that joined, was from Lothering.  He remembered us.  Remembered that Bethany was a Templar.  Told the others."  He draws in a long, slow breath; lets it out.  "They didn't do anything about it right away.  I think they fed her misinformation, expecting her to pass it on to the Gallows.  When she didn't, and plans went wrong...  That's when they came for her.  One night.  I... heard her calling for me, telling me to, to get away.  I _went_ , instead, to save her.  Sword in hand."  He laughs once.  "Took a fucking sword to a magic fight.  Didn't even think twice about it."

     The absence of his sister tells the rest of the story well enough.

     Carver sucks in a breath, loudly.  "If I had used magic.  If I had been better at magic."

     Cullen exhales, quietly.  "They would have been ready for your magic."

     A muscle flexes in Carver's jaw.  "Yeah.  That sword saved my life, really.  They'd forgotten how good I was with it.  But it took me so long to fight through them, and the d-demons and such, that... by the time I got to Bethy..."  He falls silent.

     There is nothing Cullen can say.  No words of consolation come to his mind -- not even benedictions from the Chant.  He knows how hollow those are.

     Carver turns and comes to stand over Cullen's bedroll.  He is still in silhouette; Cullen cannot see his face as he hunkers down.  "Hey."

     "Yes?"

     He hears Carver swallow.  "Can I..."  Sees him look away, shoulders tensing a little; hears him sigh.  "Let me sleep with you."

     Cullen is too stunned to answer.  Before he can say _Of course not_ , Carver blurts, "Just for sleep.  Really.  I just... fuck.  Bethy -- it wasn't anything weird, but we were twins, and sometimes, even after we grew up, she would let me... it kept the dreams at bay, some nights.  Having a-arms around me.  I just... I can't handle the bloody Fade right now.  So."  Cullen sees him lift an arm, scrub it quickly across his face, take a deep breath to steady his voice.  " _Please_."

     And Cullen remembers.

     In a Circle, one of a Templar's duties is to walk through the apprentice dormitories and younger mages' rooms to wake them now and again during the night.  In the Gallows, this became a cruel thing.  Meredith had the knights do it too often -- to remind the mages of who controlled their lives, to keep the troublemakers sleep-deprived, to weaken them all, to create an excuse for punishment when they struggled to complete tasks or wield spells the next day.  But in Kinloch, before Uldred's madness, Cullen had seen gratitude in some of the mages' eyes when he'd awakened them.

     It is a Templar's duty, again, that this mage asks of him.

     So he sighs and moves aside, making room in the bedroll.  Carver makes a sound that is not a sob, not quite a garbled mutter of thanks, and slips in beside him.  After a moment, hesitantly, he takes Cullen's hand and pulls it across himself, arm draping chest and waist.  Cullen expects it to feel awkward, inappropriate, but it does not.  He expects to have difficulty sleeping, but he does not.  They both sleep, and Carver does not stir once in the night from evil dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Sssso, yeah, that porn I was promising? Dunno if it'll happen. This story has gone completely out of my control, becoming more meditation than stress relief. I guess we'll see.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old friends appear, needing help. Carver makes clear where his loyalties lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a bit of the old ultraviolence, since this is an "action" chapter. Also warning for ugliness inspired by the lynching parties that happened in the American South, and the guillotine picnics of the French Revolution, and just about anywhere else that horrible people made an occasion out of death. Also, I have no sodding idea where Cumberland actually is. I looked at maps of the Free Marches and it's not on them. Is it real? I could swear I've heard characters mention that such a place exists. Anyway, I put it down near the Nevarran border, because fantasy geography is hard.

     In the morning Carver rises when Cullen does, and moves away from him wordlessly.  They go about the morning toilette and breakfast in silence, and do not speak of the night before. 

     They return to the road then, and though Carver annoys Cullen and Cullen attempts to protect Carver from himself as usual, something is different.  The mage irritates Cullen, always, but the irritation has lost its sting somehow.  Carver begins practicing as they walk, unprompted.  As evening falls, Cullen steers them toward a town and an inn, unasked.  In a quiet moment, Cullen wonders what all this means.  Has he grown more tolerant of the mage's ridiculous apostate misbehavior?  Has the mage taken another step toward accepting his lot in life? 

     No; Cullen decides, finally.  It is merely the beginning of a routine. 

     So it is.  They walk, they camp or stay at an inn, they bicker.  Every so often, every third or fourth night, the mage comes over to crouch by Cullen's bedroll, or hovers near his bed.  He does not ask.  Does not even look at Cullen.  But Cullen sighs and moves aside and lifts the sheets, and thus is duty served.

     This becomes life as the days pass.  Then they reach the southern Free Marches, and Cumberland, and that is when everything changes.

     From a hilltop overlooking the city it is possible to  see smoke billowing from its main Chantry spire, though the fire that caused it seems to have been put out.  The skeletal remains of what was obviously a Circle tower lie toppled outside the southern gates:  burned down months ago by the looks of it, probably not long after word spread of the Kirkwall Annulment.  But that is nothing compared to what they see when they get closer.

     All around the city, along the approach-roads and conspicuously edging its walls where visible, are dozens of mages impaled on stakes.  Or people who _might_ have been mages; it's difficult to tell when the bodies are weathered and crow-eaten, clothing that might be robes reduced to sun-faded tatters.  All Cullen can make out is that the corpses were once men and women, who might have been mages.  Children who might have been mages.  Infants who might have been mages.

     He does not have to tell Carver that they will not be going into the city.  Carver, he suspects, would not protest even if Cullen said it.

     They camp that night in the wooded foothills west of the city, well away from the main road, in a little forest copse that is surrounded by thick vegetation.  Cullen tells Carver to make a wisp and a heating-spell rather than risking a fire, and Carver again does not protest before complying.  It is strange, and almost unpleasant, for Carver to be so agreeable, and Cullen does not like how quiet the mage has gotten since they left the road.  He is actually relieved when Carver picks a fight, because that is a predictable, normal thing for him. 

     He does this by saying, while staring into the hovering light of his wisp -- "So I guess you approve of that back there."  He jerks his head back toward the city.

     This is easy.  "In general, no.  If they were abominations or blood mages, however, yes."

     "So what if they were?"  Carver focuses on him sharply.  "They were still _people_ \-- "

     "No," says Cullen, firmly.  "Abominations are not."

     "Blood mages are!  I knew one in Kirkwall, a Dalish girl; she was the nicest thing you ever knew.  Wouldn't hurt a fly unless it crossed her."

     "And if it did?"  Cullen reaches over to the pot, which is heating from Carver's spell while sitting atop a rock, to check whether the stew is done.  Just vegetables.  He's craving meat again; the stew has nothing of animal in it but a chunk of suet bought at the last inn.  But they dare not venture into Cumberland to shop its markets, so he will endure.  "Perhaps she justified it by doing harm only to her enemies, but they were _people_ too, were they not?  Did she burn up no one's lifeblood like hearthwood to fuel her magic?  Did she take over no one's mind, consort with no demons to learn her craft?"

     He knows the answer already, but Carver's jaw clamps shut in stubborn denial.  "You see," Cullen says.  "Blood mages are not condemned because they aren't _nice_.  They are condemned because they cannot wield their power, even in the most benign way, without causing immediate harm and risking greater harm in the long term."

     "They still don't deserve to get fucking _impaled_ ," Carver snarls, and now it is Cullen's turn to fall silent. Carver is right, of course.  No child of the Maker should be so desecrated.

     "Meredith gets the last laugh after all," the mage continues, and Cullen fights not to react while Carver sighs.  "This is what she wanted for us all, I wager.  You don't treat mages the way she did if you want the world to keep thinking of them as human beings.  Maker, sometimes I think Anders was actually right."  Then his voice turns hard.  " _You_ thought what she did was fine, though.  Yeah?"

     There is no point in lying.  "For a time."  Less time than the mage probably thinks.  That first year, maybe, while the wounds of Kinloch were still raw and weeping in his mind.  But as those healed, and treatment of the mages in the Gallows grew more extreme... Then he changed.  But it had still taken him years more to act.

     "And what's the fucking difference between you and her, now, huh?"

     "You are alive, _mage_."  He sees Carver scowl from the corner of his eye, and sighs, letting the anger fall away.  There's nothing to replace it but weariness.  "And so am I."

     That seems to quiet Carver's anger; the mage looks weary too.  "Yeah.  Yeah, that's us:  the ones who lived.  Sod all the rest."

     Yes.

     They eat, and split the watch, and Cullen feels as though he has hardly closed his eyes when Carver shakes him awake.  But he feels the tension in the mage's hard grip, so the cobwebs fall away immediately as he sits up.

     "Knight Captain," says the man on the other side of the fire, and Cullen is pulled years and miles back to a small room, and the brand hot in his hand, and a name.

     "Feynriel," he says, wondering.

     "You _know_ this wanker?"  Carver's sword is in his hand again; still his default defense.  They really must work on that.

     Feynriel, whose face still bears the youthfulness of an elf-blood beneath the puckered sun-brand of the Tranquil on his forehead, looks at Carver.  "The Knight Captain freed me from my torment," he says.  Carver throws a quick, horrified look at Cullen; Cullen ignores this and gets to his feet.

     "Feynriel, what are you doing here?"  It is not the Tranquil's nature to leave their homes.  They do so only when existence becomes impossible at that location, or so uncomfortable that change must be risked.  When Cullen left the Gallows, it was intact -- empty, cracked open like an egg, smoldering -- but still full of food stores and recently-vacated beds and convenient belongings.  The Tranquil should have remained.

     "I saw the light of your encampment and knew it for a mage wisp."  Feynriel's voice is less inflectionless than that of most Tranquil.  Some of them are better at emulating normalcy than others.  "I hoped to find help.  It is very good to see you here, Knight Captain.  And you, strange apostate."

     "Sodding fucking _Carver_ ," Carver snaps.

     "That is a very unusual name, Sodding Fucking Carver."

     "Explain," Cullen says, while Carver splutters.  "Help for what, Feynriel?"

     The Tranquil rises.  He's still wearing the clothing Cullen remembers him in from more than a year ago, though it has plainly been washed and mended and faded since.  But he is in good flesh and his hair is neat and no one has killed him yet, which are all good signs that someone is taking care of him. 

     "Former Recruit Keran," Feynriel says, and Cullen flinches at this.  "He requires your assistance."

#

     It is not the emergency Cullen fears, when they reach the small derelict mill that Keran has been occupying.  From the outside it looks like a termite-eaten old wheelhouse; inside, they find a hollow-eyed woman in the corner who clutches a dagger.  Keran is asleep nearby, in his armor and on the bare floor, though he jerks awake when they come in.  At once he grabs for the sword and shield resting against the wall nearby.

     "Peace," Cullen says.  Keran jerks to a halt at the sound of his voice.

     " _Knight Captain?_ "  Then he tenses and completes his grab for his weapons and gets to his feet, casting a wary look at both Cullen and Carver.  It is plain that he does not see Cullen's arrival as a positive thing.

     Still.  "I am glad to see you well, Keran."  The boy has grown a neat beard -- not so different from Thrask's, Cullen notes -- and his armor is of good quality, his sword and shield of solid make.  The mercenary life has clearly suited him.  It's also clear he grew the beard to look older; beneath it, he still has the same too-earnest, optimistic face.  And yet...  Cullen narrows his eyes, then resists the urge to nod approvingly.  The look in Keran's eyes, in spite of everything, is still all Templar.

     "I'm not glad to see you, ser," he replies, which Cullen supposes he deserves.  "What are you doing here?"

     "I brought him," says Feynriel, stepping calmly between them.

     Keran flinches out of his defensive stance, glaring at the Tranquil.  "I told you not to go wandering, Feynriel!  People around here will run you up a pole same as any other mage.  They don't care that you're Tranquil, I _told_ you."

     "I found the situation untenable, Keran," Feynriel said.  "Mages cannot be permitted to suffer; likewise, you cannot be permitted to despair.  Finding assistance was the only viable solution."  Keran groans, and Cullen feels sudden sympathy for him. 

     "You know orders are meaningless to them," Cullen says, gently.  "Especially if disobedience is more likely to achieve their desired goals.  What aid do you need?"

     "Respectfully, ser, _nothing_ from you.  You're part of the reason we're all in this mess."

     Cullen takes a deep breath, to let the sting of that blow fade.  As he does this, however, Carver steps forward, his whole stance a threat.  Cullen is not at all surprised when Keran shifts his shield to bear on Carver; mages should not be so _big_.  "Yeah, Captain Cranky's a giant arse, we all know," Carver says.  He jerks his head at Feynriel.  "But he came running when that one said you needed help, so maybe you can get over yourself and just get to the bloody point."

     "Who are you?" Keran says, staring at Carver in mingled horror and affront.

     "I'm -- "

     "A mage," says the woman in the corner.  Cullen has not forgotten her -- he is always aware of a mage nearby -- but Carver clearly has, and he jumps.  She pushes herself up from her crouch, lowering the knife, and Cullen recognizes her, though she has traded her robes for a skirt and he cannot remember her name.  She's from the Gallows; an Entropy specialist, if he recalls.  Of course she would know her own.  "You're a mage too."

     "A _mage_?"  Keran stares at Carver in frank disbelief.

     " -- Carver Hawke," Carver sighs.  "And yeah, I'm a sodding mage."

     Keran blinks, then stares at Cullen.  Something unreadable passes across his face.  "They say you killed the Knight Commander, ser."

     Cullen nods, unable to say the words aloud.  Keran considers this for a moment longer, then sighs and finally sheaths his sword.

     "Then maybe," he says, "you really are the help I need."

#

     It is called a pole party, Keran tells them.  A Cumberland noble fashion of late:  release a group of ex-Circle mages into the forest, hunt them down on horseback and with hired ex-Templars to assist, round them up and then have them impaled one by one as the nobles entertain guests nearby.

     "Supposedly they've got a chance to escape, which makes it _sporting_ ," Keran says.  He sits by the wisp that the woman has conjured, staring grimly into its light while Cullen paces back and forth, restless.  "But the truth is that the mages are starved, weak from months of captivity in some dungeon or another, elderly, sick...  When they destroyed the Cumberland Circle, the ones with the skills to survive fled then.  They do this to the ones who got left behind."

     Tomorrow morning.  Cullen flexes his sword-hand as he paces, aching for the swing and the strike and the cleansing smell of blood.

     "There are three Templars.  _Former_ Templars."  Keran, the recruit who left the service before taking his vows, smiles with thin irony as he amends this.  "They're serving as the nobles' guards, from what I can see, and -- and I hear they act as something like hounds for the hunt.  They'll be the ones to drive the mages, to make it more _exciting_ , and to hobble them for the nobles' spears when the time comes.  I'm not worried about the nobles; they're perfumed, useless creatures.  But I can't take on three knights."  He looks up at Cullen, blatantly pleading.  "Three against two is do-able, though."

     "No," says Cullen.  "I will go alone."

     Keran straightens.  "Ser, that's -- "

     "Bloody _stupid_ ," says Carver in a low, pent-angry voice, and Cullen stops pacing, sighing.

     "We cannot both risk it.  You have charges who need you."  He says this to Keran, who blinks and lowers his eyes in understanding, though he plainly does not like it.  "I have trained in fighting groups, and have a good deal of experience fighting Templars.  Recently."  He glances at Carver, who sits in the grainloft of the wheelhouse, reminding him silently that he killed four Templars to save _his_ life.  "My blade should be more than enough."

     Carver, predictably, looks mutinous.  He hops down from the grainloft and rolls his shoulders, which makes the sword at his back rattle.  Cullen knows him well enough by now to recognize this as a threat.  "Good, then two ought to make it certain."

     Cullen sighs.  "No, Carver."

     Carver's in his face in half a breath, eyes blazing, practically radiating furious heat.  "Why the flaming fuck not?  I've fought Templars before."  He looks Cullen up and down, contemptuously this time, a different silent reminder.  " _Recently_."

     "And that is irrelevant," Cullen says, grinding his teeth for patience.  "However well you fight, Carver, the instant they guess what you are, they will _Smite_ you, repeatedly."

     "Smites take down people who aren't mages, too."  Carver lifts his chin.

     "For a moment, sometimes.  With you, it _will_ be minutes, because you have a vulnerability that warriors do not."  Carver's nostrils flare at this reminder that he isn't a warrior; Cullen pushes relentlessly on.  "In that time, you will be dead -- or I will be, trying to defend you.  _You'll be in my way_."

     That does it, he sees -- though it is a brutal, butchering sort of verbal surgery.  Carver flinches and steps back, lowering his head and radiating frustration, fists tight at his sides.  Cullen finally sighs, stepping forward and putting a hand on Carver's shoulder.  It jumps beneath his hand, though whether with suppressed rage or surprise, Cullen cannot tell.

     "Stay here," he says, gently.  "Help Keran guard the others.  _Use your magic_ if you are attacked; no one will expect it of you.  The element of surprise is an advantage for you here, where it would not be in my situation."  He pauses, then decides not to soften this blow, either.  "And you will need a new Templar, should I fall."

     Carver frowns and glances at Keran.  Keran looks back at them, visibly confused.  "You must be sodding _kidding_ me," Carver mutters.

     Privately Cullen hopes it does not become necessary, because Carver will eat Keran alive.

     There's no more argument after that, thankfully.  Cullen has the directions from Feynriel, who came upon the pole party being arranged the day before, the mages in cages and the nobles assembling and showing off their hunt-outfits to one another.  By now the mages will have been released, then run down and recaptured; usually, the party lasts all night with the executions culminating at dawn.  Cullen nods to Keran, squeezes Carver's shoulder one more time in reassurance -- Carver makes an annoyed sound and jerks away -- and heads forth.

     He hears the party long before he reaches it; they've got a bard.  They're back along the road toward Cumberland, in an off-the-road pavillion that smells of new wood; he has passed others like it along the route and wondered, until now, what they were for.  The poles are sitting outside, ready to do their work:  the sharpened bit is metal, perhaps ten feet long.  It has vicious upward-pointing hooks near the base, which Cullen wagers are meant to keep the corpse from sliding all the way down the pole.  The rest is wood, a separate piece meant to be screwed in, then hoisted by several people at once.  He supposes the guests must help with this.  The holes for the poles have already been dug, along the nearby side of the road.

     The nobles are laughing and drinking and dancing in the pavillion; around it, looking bored, Cullen spies the three Templars.  One is sitting on a picnic table polishing his shield; the other is reading a book on the pavillion steps; the third has propped himself against the cage of silent, huddled creatures that sits beside the pavillion.  That one is rubbing his chin as he peers in at them, perhaps thinking of taking one of them out for further sport before they die.  Their armor is shinier than Cullen's, their shields less dented and scuffed, but they don't notice him until he's almost on top of them.  He suppresses a sigh of contempt.

     "May the Maker have mercy on you," he says as he walks toward them, unhitching his shield and drawing his sword.  Even then they are slow to react, staring at him as if they cannot believe what they see.  "I certainly won't."

     They die quickly, honorlessly.  The last one, who actually draws his sword, can barely hold it; he quavers out the words, "Knight Avenger," before Cullen cuts him nearly in half.  Then Cullen glances up at the pavillion, in case the nobles should have ideas.  The music has stopped, and all of them stand at the railing, staring in various states of shocked silence.  No threat. 

     So he ignores them, and goes to check the cage.  He keeps his sword in hand as he does it, because he's done this before and knows the danger.  A blow from the pommel of his sword shatters the cage's lock; then he opens the door and stands aside.  "Come."

     The command makes some of them stir, and finally obey.  There are four mages in total -- no.  Five.  One of them is a woman of perhaps Cullen's age, who carries an infant strapped to her otherwise bare chest with the remnants of her shirt.  She's the one he begins to keep an eye on, because there's still fight in her; he sees the determination to survive in her eyes.  The others are an elderly man who was once portly, now too-thin and saggy from long starvation; a young man with a bad limp, which Cullen suspects is a broken ankle or foot; and an older woman, who looks around in a dazed sort of way, as if expecting a soft couch and a book to appear at any moment.  They form a rough line in front of him, however, plainly used to Templars' demands.

     "Are you well?"  Cullen starts to walk down the line, searching for the signs of possession or blood magic, tensed and ready for the threat that any mage possesses.  None of them answer, however, and one of them -- the young man -- suddenly glances behind Cullen, his eyes widening.  Startled, Cullen turns --

     -- just in time for a dainty noble girl of perhaps thirteen or fourteen winters to ram him through the gut with a dagger.

     "How unexpected," says another of the nobles, coming down from the pavillion.

     As Cullen staggers and shoves the girl away and gropes for the hot lance of agony she's thrust into him, he finally realizes his mistake:  fixating on the mages in the cages, of course.  Forgetting that in many cases -- Tevinter, Kinloch, Carver's dead sister -- the ones committing such atrocities are too-often corrupt mages themselves.

     This one, a well-dressed gentleman of late middle years, smiles and glows with blood magic as he stops before Cullen.  The mages Cullen has just rescued retreat at once -- the woman with the child edging toward the forest beyond the road, the others just huddling against their cage.  The other nobles are still staring from the pavillion -- the stare of thralls, of course, and the little girl's fanatic strength is another example of this.  No child her age should have been able to get through his armor.  She lies where he's flung her, face blank now, and the blood mage steps over her in his approach to Cullen -- though he stops when Cullen bares his teeth and lifts his sword defensively.

     He hurts too much to Smite.  But he has to, has to concentrate through the pain, because otherwise --

     "Such a brave Templar," the blood mage says.  "A _real_ one, no less; such a rarity in this day and age!  Are you actually still protecting mages like these?"  He eyes the Circle Mages with contempt.  "Your talents would be better-spent assisting a mage who is worthy of your skills.  And I could Heal you."  He glances toward Cullen's midriff, which seems to throb harder in reaction.  "Wouldn't it be nice to live?"

     "I would rather die than serve you."  Cullen voice shakes.  He tells himself it's shock; it isn't, not really.  It is years ago and a land away, and he is in a magical cage.  The look in Uldred's eyes was the same as that on this man's face, avid and distant at once, and Cullen knows there is nothing left of whoever this mage actually was.  Now he is merely the window through which an evil intelligence looks upon the mortal realm, and finds it a pleasant-enough plaything.

     "Yes.  Well."  The mage sighs.  "I think," and he raises a hand, curling his fingers in a gesture that makes Cullen's skin prickle with fear, "my demon will be so _happy_ for a taste of you, my friend.  It has been ages since we dined upon one of the righteous ones..."

     He has the strength for a Silencing, but it will be weak.  Is that enough?  Not for a blood mage.  But the man is out of range for a sword-lunge, and if he cages Cullen --  Cullen knows he cannot bear the cage.  Not now, and never again.

     He looks at the sword in his hand, and thinks of turning and falling upon it.  But before he can work up the courage, he hears a heavy, ominous, _familiar_ whoosh.

     (It is not shameful that he feels relief in this moment, is it?  He isn't sure.  He's also not sure he cares.)

     So the blood mage's body topples, headless, and Carver steps over it, glowering at the other mages and the nobles who are beginning to blink and gasp and come back to life as they recover from mind control.

     "Anybody else got a demon in 'em?  Yeah?  No?"  The nobles stare at Carver in dim horror.  "Right, then.  Get out of here.  And thank the Maker I don't kill you."  They keep staring, so Carver lifts his sword and shouts a war cry so fierce that Cullen is honestly impressed.  The nobles are less so; nearly as one, they panic and yelp and tumble over each other, fleeing down the road toward Cumberland in a flutter of laces and perfume.

     Before they've vanished into the distance, Carver rounds on the Circle Mages.  "You lot, too.  Any more demons?" 

     Mute with terror, the mages shake their heads.  The one with the child edges another step back, waiting for her chance.  Cullen opens his mouth to warn Carver and then has to sit down.  He does not intend this.  His legs -- one of which is damp and hot with blood running into the cuisse -- simply won't support him any longer.  Carver glances at him, but rightly keeps his attention focused on the mages, and Cullen cannot help but think, _Maker, you would have been such a good Templar._

     Alas.

     "None of us are blood mages," says the old man.  His voice is hoarse, perhaps from screaming, or dehydration.  "We are loyal to the ways of Andraste, Templar."

     Carver sort of blinks at the misappellation.  "Uh, right, well.  There's another Templar, a decent one, back at our camp if you think you'll need someone to help you.  If you want to go off on your own -- "  He eyes the woman with the baby, whose jaw tightens.  "I won't try to stop you.  But maybe you ought to prepare first, yeah?"  He jerks his head toward the bodies of the dead Templars.  "Take their coin and divide it among you. Take some of their armor to sell; the right buyers will pay handsome for it."

     The woman looks thoughtful, no longer so poised to flee.  The young man is staring intently at Carver; Cullen thinks he has probably guessed that Carver is not what he seems to be.  But the older man pulls forward the dazed woman, putting an arm around her proprietarily.

     "I believe Sinnah and I will follow you," he says.  "If you know other Templars who haven't forgotten their duty...  We could use their assistance."

     Carver nods.  "Then wait a minute."  With that, he turns and comes over to Cullen, crouching beside him and sighing at the knife in his gut.  "For fuck's sake, Cullen."

     "Carver," Cullen says.  He's not really sure what else to say.

     "Not a word, you bloody fool.  Going to take everything I've got to fix this without you distracting me."  He sets his blade down, then takes a deep breath and grasps the dagger's hilt. 

     Cullen thinks he's ready for it, but he isn't.  The pain as the knife comes out folds like heavy black wings around him, and he stops thinking for awhile.

#

     It's hard to see, when Cullen wakes.  He smells old wood and mildew, the tang of lyrium -- ah, this is on his lips too, someone has fed it to him, how thoughtful -- and his own body, rank with dried blood and fear sweat.  His armor has been removed.  He's lying on something moderately soft, and something immoderately heavy is resting on one side of his chest, and for a moment he wonders how he got here, wherever this is, and what is happening, and why.

     Then something stirs and the heavy thing lifts and moves into view:  Carver's head, his face lit in stark blue-white and shadow from a wisp nearby.  Cullen remembers what has happened, and realizes he must be back at the wheelhouse.  He can hear soft murmurs nearby:  Feynriel's soft monotone as he answers the new mages' questions.  Keran, speaking to the woman in the corner.  But all of this fades to insignificance when Carver leans down to kiss him.

     That is.  Inappropriate.  But it does not _feel_ wrong, and so Cullen does not pull away.  He isn't sure why.

     "You're welcome," Carver says when he's done.  He's angry, and the harsh light picks this out of his face easily.  What is not visible in his face, however, is what's audible in his voice:  a softness that is not angry at all, just relieved and exasperated and warm and weary.  For a moment Cullen thinks Carver expects thanks for the kiss, and then he remembers that the mage saved his life.

     "You're _my_ Templar," Carver says.  It is barely above a whisper, a shadow in the room's dimness.  " _Mine_ , do you understand?  No blood mage gets you.  No weakling bullshit Templars.  I won't let them.  No one has you but me."

     Cullen blinks at him, unsure of exactly what is being said, or how he feels about it.  But he is more sure when Carver lifts a hand to brush fingers over his forehead, and along the line of Cullen's hair, and down along Cullen's jaw.  Then a muscle in Carver's jaw flexes, and he takes a deep breath and pulls away, sitting up and drawing up his knees and putting his back to Cullen.  "Now go the fuck to sleep."

     Cullen gazes at his back for a long while, but eventually obeys.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The motley crew makes some rearrangements, then resumes the journey. Carver gets the illusion of what he wants most in all the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have been informed in the comments that Cumberland is actually in Nevarra, and in game canon is the seat of the College of Magi. Uh, I didn't know that, so in this AU Cumberland is just the southernmost city of the Free Marches, and its Circle is nothing special. D'oh.

     It isn't what Cullen intended.  What did he intend?  He doesn't know.  Not this... menagerie.

     Surprisingly, it is the young man with the limp -- from a long-ago deliberately crushed foot, the others explain; the Cumberland Templars' way of repaying him for an escape attempt -- who chooses to go off on his own.  He does follow Carver's suggestion and takes some of the dead Templars' coin, of which there is rather a lot.  He'll need it.  But Keran, who speaks to the young man while Cullen rests from the healing, makes only a token effort to convince him to stay.  It will be difficult enough managing the mages that remain.

     Who include:  Engin, the older male mage, who astoundingly was once First Enchanter of the Cumberland Circle; Sinnah, once a Senior Enchanter of that same Circle, who has suffered some sort of break with reality amid the horrors since its dissolution; Viveka, the woman with the child, who seems vaguely familiar to Cullen; Shiv, the baby, whose gender Cullen hasn't yet figured out, and whose name appalls him; Mithryn, the Kirkwall mage who was with Keran before; and of course Feynriel.  And Carver, who seems just as annoyed by the whole situation as Cullen feels.

     But it is a mark of how much the healing has exhausted Carver that he does not complain about their new companions, when Cullen drags him out to bathe in the river.  It's late, almost dark, because Carver has slept for most of the day; he's still a little wan and gray even now.  _Used too much of his own strength,_ Cullen assesses with an expert eye; it is something beginning healers are prone to.  With time and practice, a healer eventually learns to use their patient's strength to augment their own.

     "Tomorrow," Cullen informs him, "you will cast a second-stage restorative aura and hold it for at least one hour."

     Carver, soaping himself in the water -- since the dead Templars had a nice chunk of good-quality soap -- turns to glare at him, but it's a paltry glare, for him.  "The fuck for?"

     Cullen, who sits on the wheelhouse steps, merely looks at him, and Carver sighs and resumes his ablutions.  "Don't know why I don't bloody hate you."

     _Because you are in love with me_ , Cullen understands, but does not say. 

     There's no point to saying it, in any case.

     "Succeed," Cullen says instead, "and I will spar with you in the afternoon."

     Carver straightens at once, though Cullen can hear him trying to sound nonchalant as he says, "Thought we were leaving tomorrow."

     "We are."  Carver can work the spell as he walks.  It will be a good test of his concentration.  And after walking all day, and sparring once they camp, he should sleep deeply enough to suffer no dreams.  Cullen thinks he can judge Carver's limitations well enough to avoid overtaxing him, and of course Carver will complain if Cullen errs.

     "You decided what to do about all that?"  Carver jerks his head back toward the wheelhouse.  They can hear the others talking quietly inside, their voices periodically clear through the thin, termite-eaten walls.  Likely they can hear Carver and Cullen as well, but Cullen does not care.

     "Should I be doing something about it?"

     Carver turns, frowning.  "You'd really do it," he says, his voice flat.  "Walk away, leave a bunch of half-broken mages to fend for themselves in the middle of a land where they're being hoisted up on poles."

     "I walked away and left _you_ , as you might recall."

     "Yeah, I _recall_.  But I was healthy, young.  I didn't stick out like a bloody sore thumb _on fire_ , the way some of that lot do."

     Cullen shakes his head.  "Your ability to survive without me was irrelevant."

     " _Irrelevant?_ "

     Cullen sighs.  "What Meredith ultimately proved is that mages cannot be _caged_.  The attempt can be made, and managed with some degree of success, but that requires... cruelties.  And in the long run, the attempt will fail.  Mages will devote all their formidable powers not to the defense of the world, but to escape, or subversive activities, or outright resistance against the Chantry.  In the meantime, Templars will inevitably be corrupted by their fear of magic, as surely as mages can be by magic itself.  This cannot be what the Maker intended."

     "And that means fuck-all what?"

     Cullen shakes his head at the mage's deliberate crudeness.  "It means that we must find another way."

     Carver lifts his hands to rub the soap over his hair, though he is plainly considering this.  "Maybe this."

     "What?"

     Carver shrugs, carefully nonchalant.  "You and me.  We're working, aren't we?  Maybe all mages need their own personal Templar."  He grimaces.  "Ugh, but that's like the Qunari, isn't it?  And what if your Templar's an arse?"

     "Or your mage."  Cullen says this mildly, but Carver chuckles, hearing the edge in it.

     "Yeah, well, point stands, though.  Maybe every mage baby has to get paired with someone that will look after them.  Someone strong enough to do it right, and not sodding bully them or whatever.  Or maybe the good ones get five or six mages to look after at once."  He wipes soap out of his eyes and glances toward the wheelhouse.

     Cullen shakes his head.  "I agreed to serve as your Templar because you _asked_ me to."

     "What, that's it?"

     That isn't it, and Cullen doesn't bother to answer.  Carver is not stupid.  If he considers for half a breath, he will remember when Cullen made his decision:  when he said _I will kill you_ if Carver ever faltered, and Carver said _Fine_.

     Carver watches him with uncharacteristic seriousness despite his earlier jibing; perhaps he has already considered this.  Then he ducks under the water, rinsing off, and that is the end of the conversation.

     "We face a curious dilemma," says Engin.  

It's dinner time now. Everyone has gathered near the wisp and heating-spells to talk.  From around the circle of them Cullen hears nervous chuckles and bitter sighs at Engin's magnificent understatement.

     "There's nowhere for us to go," says Mithryn.  She is clutching the knife again, turning and turning it in her fingers unsheathed.  Cullen gathers that this is a comforting gesture for her.  "The Circles were never _safe_ , but without one..."

     "Without one, you live as you have to."  This is Viveka, who's standing to tend the too-small cookpot with one hand; her other hand holds the baby to her breast, where it suckles.  The stew is for her, given that she feeds two, and for the new mages, who have not eaten in days.  The rest of them will be making do with the dried fruit and nuts that were in the dead Templars' belongings.  Viveka continues:  "If I could get by in Kirkwall of all places, any of you can in some quieter town or port.  Just -- blend in."

     "That is not possible for some of us," says Feynriel.  Some of the people around him shift, uncomfortably.

     "And not all of us want to," says Engin, with a heavy sigh.  "What you suggest, young lady, is that we pretend to be something other than what we are.  I chose to live in a Circle because I wanted a place where hiding wasn't _necessary_."

     "Well, now it is, 'cause that place is gone."  Viveka shrugs, oblivious or perhaps just not caring when Engin flinches.  "Not like mages are the only people in the world who have to hide to get by.  And anyway, there will always be places where you can be yourself; just have to find them."

     "Like what?"

     "The local smuggling gangs will always welcome mages.  The local thieves' guilds.  The local whorehouses."

     The Blooming Rose, Cullen realizes.  He remembers talking to Viveka, stammering the whole time, to find out where his missing recruits had gone.  She'd laughed at his discomfiture, not unkindly, and sent him to confront a blood mage posing as a prostitute.  It hadn't even occurred to him that she, too, might be a hidden mage.

     The mistakes of a different life.

     "Unacceptable," says Engin, scowling.  "I will not resort to _crime_.  Or immorality."

     Viveka rolls her eyes.  "Well, starve, then."

     "Ferelden," says Keran, before Engin can open his mouth to say whatever furious thing he's obviously about to.  They all turn to Keran; he takes a deep breath.  "I -- Feynriel, Mithryn, and I -- are heading to Ferelden.  With the Blight so newly over, we've heard no one has the time to care much about illegal mages; they've still got darkspawn to deal with.  The king there's a friend to mages -- "

     "Used to be a Templar, though," says Viveka, scowling.  "And he's a king.  Might change his mind about that 'friend to mages' crap whenever the wind blows a different way."

     "He's a _true_ Templar," Keran says, his voice suddenly sharp.  "Ser Thrask -- my mentor, who led a revolt against Meredith, said he was an honorable man.  And he's a Grey Warden.  They know to fear magic, not mages.  I -- "  He falters, sags a little, his fire dying as quickly as it flared. "I don't know what's happening there, now.  But...  Things can't be as bad as here.  They just -- can't be."

     He closes his mouth.  They are all leaning forward a little now, hungry, hopeful -- except Carver, who is sitting away from the rest of the group, with his knees drawn up and his eyes on the wisp.  He looks bored.  Cullen watches him, mostly, though he follows the conversation too with distant interest.

     He is not the only one to notice Carver.  "Young man," says Engin, leaning forward.  His face is open, his tone inviting; a natural teacher, good at drawing everyone in and making them feel important. It is easy to see how such a man became First Enchanter.  "We have not heard your opinion."

     Carver's eyes shift to him, and Engin is not the only one to recoil at the hostility in his gaze.

     "Do whatever you want," Carver says.  "Just don't get in my sodding way."

     "Mages must stick together," says Mithryn, hesitantly.

     _Mages killed my sister_ , Cullen hears Carver say, in memory.

     "No, mages fucking _mustn't_."  Carver gets to his feet; the people nearest him shrink back a little.  "My father was a mage.  He didn't like the Circle, so he escaped it.  Lived like a bloody _person_ for twenty years, building a home and raising a family.  You all talk like you can't do that."

     Engin, whose arm has been around Sinnah the whole time, pulls her a little closer, protectively.  Mithryn looks horrified.  "We can't!  What if -- "  She hunches.  "There are _demons_."

     "Yeah, but you're Harrowed, so tell them to sod off and go on about your life."  Sinnah gasps, her first contribution to the conversation, and a horrified silence falls.  In it, Carver stares around at all of them, his expression incredulous and full of contempt.  "There haven't _always_ been Circles.  Mages haven't _always_ let themselves be penned in and tagged and culled like sodding _sheep_.  And don't give me Tevinter; mages live like people in Rivain, and among the Chasind and the Dalish, too.  Probably elsewhere.  It's not just magister-or-slave, for fuck's sake!  We have to find another way."

     He actually listened, Cullen realizes, and stifles amusement.

     "Perhaps you are strong enough to fend the demons off on your own."  They all tense, because it's Feynriel who's speaking again.  He turns his empty gaze on Carver, whose belligerence wilts somewhat.  Cullen does not blame him for this.  "I was not."

     "Maker's Arse," mutters someone.  Probably Viveka.

     Engin sighs.  "And many other mages will not be able to, either."

     Carver's gaze darts to Cullen, and away.  Cullen sees a muscle in his jaw work.  "Maybe not," he mutters finally.  Then he lifts his chin, recovering.  "But like I said, do whatever the sod you want.  Don't count me in your planning, though.  I'm not one of you."

     With that he turns and heads into the mill-room of the wheelhouse, where his bedroll lies, and Cullen hears the wooden floor creak as he settles down.

     The others exhale, and shift, and look at each other, and fidget.  Cullen straightens from where he has been leaning against a pillar.

     "Knight Captain?"  It's Keran, so Cullen stops.  "What do you mean to do?"

     He sees concern in Keran's face, mingled with wariness.  Not enough wariness.  Cullen is not Thrask, who died from trusting mages too much, and from not striking hard enough when he rebelled.

     "I mean to see to my mage," he says.  He glances at the others, and finds the anxiety and hope on their faces too much to bear -- Keran included.  "See to your own as you see fit." 

     Shocked silence.  He turns his back on them all and follows Carver into the mill room.

     Carver does not shift closer as Cullen lies down.  There's no real need; their bedrolls are only an arms' length apart.  Still, Cullen has seen the tension in him, and that usually means nightmares -- the demons responding to whatever troubles him.  It is odd that Carver does not come.  Perhaps he is concerned about what the others might think?  No, Carver doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks.  Then it is simply odd.

     "If any of that lot _asks_ ," Carver murmurs, for Cullen's ear only.  "If any of them are willing to fight, and risk and, and take a bloody _chance_..."

     Cullen nods, understanding and agreeing.  They can do this, make it to Fereldan, with mages who are capable of adapting to the world as it is now.  Mages who have a certain warrior spirit, even if they are not warriors.  Cullen doubts, however, that any of them will be so inclined.  He can hear them still talking in the other room now, in low murmurs.  Engin's affronted tone and Mithryn's fearful quaver dominate.

     "If they can't do even that much, let them stay with Baby Cullen there," Carver whispers, suddenly and fiercely.  "The weak ones don't deserve you."

     Cullen turns his head to gaze at Carver.  Technically, Carver is the weakest mage in the lot.  Carver immediately gets his gist, makes a face at him, then rolls over to sleep.

     Cullen lies awake awhile longer, half-listening to the conversation when he can and thinking wearily that Carver is right; there were not always Circles.  But in those days, according to Chantry historians, most mages died miserably, and took many others with them when they did.  It is a consolation, of sorts, to understand that at least some of what the Templars did in Kirkwall was kindness, even if it all went so wrong.

     "Nnh."  Cullen glances over.  Carver is twitching, shoulders hunching in his sleep.  "...nnh, sod off.  Shit-eating... wanker.  _No_."

     No _Begone, demon_ or _In the Maker's name_.  Cullen almost smiles.  Then he reaches over and puts a hand on Carver's shoulder.  It is the effort of a moment to send a quick sort of pulse through him, like a Silencing that has fizzled, incomplete -- enough, however, to disrupt any mage's connection with the Fade briefly, and end a troublesome dream.

     He learned this trick, he reflects, from sitting beside Feynriel's bed all through one night, trying to help the boy get just a few hours of peaceful rest.

     Carver quiets at once, with a soft sigh that Cullen thinks might convey relief.  Then Cullen shifts his own bedroll over to adjoin Carver's, and pulls the mage back to spoon against him.  The weight and warmth of the mage in his arms is oddly comforting.  He does not let himself think about this.

     He does, however, finally let himself rest.

#

     In the morning they are gearing up to leave when Viveka comes over and sits  on the millstone's edge.  Her baby, whom Cullen has never heard cry once, peers at them from amid the folds of the bizarre garment she has rigged around her torso -- half swaddling wrap for the child and half shawl for herself.  Cullen still can't figure out whether the baby is a boy or a girl.

     "I have an idea," Viveka says to Cullen.  "But I need you to help me pull it off."  She outlines her plan and Cullen is honestly impressed.  He looks at Carver, who looks pleased.  It has rankled both of them that none of the mages seemed fit to join them.  Now this one has shown that she is.

     Still.  The child is a problem.  Cullen gazes at it, and it gazes back, blinking owlishly.  "We will need Feynriel," he says at last.

     "So grab him."

     Cullen gives her a look.  "The Tranquil lack only emotions," he says.  "Their minds are just as keen as always.  We will present the situation to him, and see if he is _willing_ to shoulder the risk."

     But when they do so, Feynriel rises without a moment's hesitation.  "I find your proposal acceptable, Knight Captain."

     The others are still stirring from sleep and getting themselves together, casting resentful glances at Cullen and the rest for being awake and functional and decisive.  Or for other reasons; Cullen does not know and does not care.  He does hesitate, though, to see Keran sit up from his bedroll and look at them, expressionless as a Tranquil himself. 

     To Feynriel, Cullen says, "Do you not wish to make your farewells?"  If he has been with Keran since Kirkwall.

     "I informed Former Recruit Keran that I meant to leave with you, last night," says Feynriel, in his placid way.  "Had you not agreed to me traveling with you, I would have followed."

     Cullen is doomed, it seems, to be pursued across Thedas by irritating, aggressive young mages.

     The four of them -- five, counting the babe -- head outside.  Here are piled the spoils of their victory against the demon of Cumberland:  the gear and belongings of the three dead Templars, already picked over for valuables and food.  But the armor itself, which apparently Feynriel was thoughtful enough to take, lies where the others have left it.  Cullen sees a boot-print on one breastplate, though he never kicked any of the Templars as he was killing them.  He picks it up, takes out his sword-cleaning rag, and wipes the mark off.

     "Here," he says, handing it to Carver.  One of the sets is made for a woman; he gives that to Viveka.  Neither she nor Carver are wearing proper gambesons, which means they will both doubtless chafe from the chain before the end of the day, but that cannot be helped.  He explains, using his own gear to demonstrate, how to wear the armor, how to tie the sashes, how to hook the shield so that no passing Templar will question them.  That might happen anyway, without the gambesons -- Templar gambesons are patterned like priests' robes, and meant to be visible through the armor -- but any Templar who gets close enough to critique them on that will be close enough for Cullen to kill.  Then their gambeson problem will be solved.

     Viveka hands her child over to Feynriel while she armors up, and Cullen sees her glancing frequently at the Tranquil to make sure he's holding the babe right.  But Feynriel tucks the child into one arm as smoothly as if he has done it all his life.  When he notices Viveka's glower, he says, "This would appear to be the optimal position.  I am capable of changing diapers.  Unfortunately I have no milk for when feeding is required."

     She blinks, taken aback, then chuckles a little.  "Good point."  She looks at Cullen.

     "We will stop as needed," Cullen says.  He has been trying to figure out how to get her breastplate to lie better; she is big and full of milk while most Templar women tend toward flatness from all the swordwork.  She'll have to be a slovenly Templar, wearing her plate straps too loose -- but in this day and age, no one will think twice about a degree of laxity.  "But you may only feed the child when we are out of sight of others on the road, since Templars are drummed out of the Order if they have or sire a child while they are below officer-rank.  Otherwise, we are simply taking a mageborn child to a Chantry orphanage.  It is not unheard-of for Templars to commandeer a Tranquil for childcare."  He nods to Feynriel, who nods back, then levels a look at Viveka.  "You should show no concern for the child, mind you, when others are about."

     "Right, right, no need to get all dramatic."  She looks only mildly annoyed.  "I can pull it off."

     Cullen turns to inspect Carver, and spies him over by the water.  When he stops beside Carver, he sees that the mage is looking into the water at his reflection.  At himself, in Templar armor.

     "A fine job," Cullen says, looking him over.  Even the sash lies properly.

     Carver nods.  He closes his eyes for a moment, and Cullen is surprised to realize he is praying.  For the soul of his dead sister?  For the Maker to send a miracle, and make him no longer a mage?  Perhaps both, so bleak is Carver's expression when he opens his eyes.  "I'm ready," he says, turning away from the water.  He will not meet Cullen's eyes.

     Keran comes out onto the wheelhouse's porch as they leave, and Cullen feels the younger man's gaze against his back.  He does turn back, though it seems pointless.  What is there to say, that matters?  They are leaving Keran with a gaggle of mages who will likely get him killed within days.  A fare-ye-well seems inappropriate.

     But Keran's smile is not empty.  Rueful, perhaps.  Unsurprised.  A little regretful, for things that cannot ever be.  If Thrask had succeeded, perhaps; if Keran had earned his knighthood; if Cullen had acted sooner.  But the past is done, and there is no unmaking it.  They can only do the best they can with what they have.

     "May the Maker watch over you all," Keran says.  It sounds sincere.  Perhaps it is a sign of the Maker's existence, Cullen thinks, that this man -- who has been tormented by demons, cut off from his career dreams by Cullen, torn from his lover by blood mages, driven from his home by chaos -- still believes in Him.

     And it is a sign of how far Cullen has fallen that he cannot muster a similar blessing in response. 

     He nods back, though, and sincerely hopes that he will see Keran again someday, in a better place if such can ever be.  Then he turns, and leads his charges on down the road.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A relative calm in the storm. Carver chafes against fate, and Cullen determines a dutiful solution to the problem.

     Ironically, the journey becomes easier almost immediately.  In some ways.

     As if to prove that they've made the right choice, they come upon a half-burned wagon near the road the next day.  The wagon's driver is unrecognizable, burned meat, and the cargo has already been picked over for valuables, but clearly it once held supplies meant for a Templar garrison:  shieldfaces, bars of red steel for the local Tranquil to make into enchanted weaponry, and gear -- including gambesons of all things, folded neatly in the underbed cache.  They smell of smoke but are otherwise undamaged.  Viveka's is too small for her chest and Carver's is too tight in the shoulders, but both mages more than pass muster now.

     And now, no longer are they a suspiciously lone Templar sometimes seen with his crass foreign companion.  Now they are something commonplace, if less-than-fully-desirable:  a troop of Templars going about their duty, with a bit less overt cruelty than most.  The implicit cruelty of their presence, of Feynriel's brand and the apparently motherless babe he carries, sends a silent message of warning:  _we are the hand of the Chantry, without mercy; fear us or fall before us_.  The people they pass on the road draw away and do not look at them directly, which helps to keep them safe.

     (It is not right, Cullen thinks, but does not say.  The people's fear.  But it is nothing more than what he deserves -- and if it helps him protect his charges, then he must accept it as a blessing, however double-edged.)

     The boon of it is that now they can go into cities which Cullen might once have avoided, on his own or even with Carver in tow, for fear of standing out too much.  Now they walk past posters describing Cullen's face and features, and all is well.  Now they dicker over vegetables with city guards standing not ten feet away at the market guardpost.  Cullen does not pretend to be anyone other than himself, because he will not endure lies -- but his companions avoid saying his name nevertheless, and no one else asks.  No one expects to find Meredith's Bane, the Knight Avenger (he _hates_ that song, when he finally hears it) strolling through a tavern at the arse-end of Nevarra, several hundred miles from the city that made him infamous.

     Feynriel is Feynriel.  The babe Shiv, whom Cullen finally learns is a girl, hardly ever cries.  Viveka is marvelous.  Years of serving drinks to Templars in the Rose -- and, she says when they have relaxed around each other, cleaning up their spend and shit and spit -- have given her plenty of opportunities to observe Kirkwall's finest, and she plays the role of off-duty junior knight to the hilt.  He suspects she's having fun with it.  Sometimes, in fact, Cullen forgets that she is a mage, Coterie-trained and with whorehouse amorality; he should be watching her more closely than even Carver for corruption.  But somehow she feels of stability and strength, and after the first few days of close scrutiny, he relaxes around her as well.  He never needs to silence her dreams.

     It is only Carver, now, who worries him.

     Carver, who is not sleeping well lately, and who murmurs often in his sleep when he does, cursing his demons.  Carver, who no longer asks to share Cullen's bed -- he accepts when Cullen offers, and submits whenever Cullen demands, but he does not _ask_ , even obliquely -- and pretends that he no longer feels the need.  He's not nearly as good an actor as Viveka.  Carver, who hardly ever smiles anymore, and thus in Templar armor is even more intimidating to strangers than Cullen.  They _step_ out of Cullen's way, and _trot_ out of Carver's.

     Carver, who readily practices magic now, and is improving -- but he refuses, saying he's tired, when Cullen offers him the chance to spar.  That alone would have Cullen concerned, but in combination with the rest, it is a clanging alarum.

     It is as if, Cullen decides over days and down the miles, the act of assuming a Templar's role has finally driven home what Carver's sister and father and years of reality failed to:  that he is not, and will never be, a warrior.  This shallow guise is as close as he will ever get to the life he yearns to have.

     It is as if his heart is broken.  And Cullen hasn't a clue of how to mend it.

     They settle one evening in a noisy tavern in central Orlais, just outside Val Foret -- having skirted 'round Val Royeaux, where the chance of running into Templars or Seekers alert enough to notice Cullen is simply too great.  Shiv is sick -- just a cold, but the weather is chancy enough that an infant's cold could easily become something worse, and Carver is not a good-enough healer to deal with it should that occur.  So they will stay put long enough to be sure of her health.  Feynriel has gone to take a bath, here in the early evening when few others are likely to come upon him and be disturbed by his Tranquil manner.  Carver has gone downstairs to the bar, which Cullen permitted only because Carver left while Cullen was off giving their laundry to the inn's scullery. It does not escape Cullen that this is the third time Carver has done this in recent weeks -- absconded without word -- though he knows how it troubles Cullen.  Something in the mage chafes to be away from him, even if the mage generally seems content to remain under Cullen's care, and Cullen cannot understand it.

     "This happens, you know," says Viveka, playing with the baby.  It's a two-room suite, connected by an adjoining door.  She's in the other room, which she shares with Feynriel, but the door is open, and she has seen Cullen's pacing.  "People get tired of each other when they've been together long enough.  No sense getting all stressed about it."

     Cullen shakes his head.  This is the trouble with doing something new.  He has no precedent to guide him, no Chantry lore to research, no priestly advice to fall back on.  It is intensely frustrating.  "I had hoped that having other mages around would help him."

     Viveka catches one of Shiv's toes, and the baby's laughter rises in a loud squeal.  This is the only time the child is ever loud:  when she's happy.  Viveka grins, but speaks to Cullen.  "Well, honey, he doesn't really think of himself as a mage.  Neither do I, actually; in my head, I'm just some Kirkwaller waitress who forgot to check if he was _wearing_ that Orlesian Letter I gave him."  She grimaces down at her child, and Cullen coughs, uncomfortably.  "Templars suck, Shivvie.  'Cept this one."  She jerks her head toward Cullen.

     Cullen almost stumbles.  _A Templar?_   That is troubling.  He changes the subject.  "Circle Mages are... quite different to you two."

     Her voice is wry.  "Yeah, I noticed.  Couldn't really blame Engin and the rest, sheltered as they were, but still."  As Cullen watches, contemplative, she makes faces at the baby, which turns Shiv's cough into a giggle.  "Look, maybe you and Carver just need a break.  Or maybe -- "  She considers.  "Maybe he needs to feel special for awhile.  I mean, he's not the flowers type, but you could find _something_ for him that he'd like.  A new sword, maybe?  Or mix things up the next few times.  Different position, a little rough stuff, whatever."

     Cullen stops pacing and stares at her, but she still has eyes only for her child, and does not notice his shock.

     "I mean," she says, blowing on one of her baby's feet, "maybe it's time for Feynriel and me and this little piggy here -- "  She nips Shiv's toe with her lips; Shiv tries to kick her in the face, delighted.  " -- to clear out for a night, let you and him work things out without having to be quiet about it for a change.  You know?  Say the word when you want.  We've got enough coin from those bastards in Cumberland to spare."

     Maker.  And it does no good to tell her that _he is a Templar, he would never_ , because she is a mage and she is playing with a Templar's child even as Cullen stands there in shock.

     He musters enough wherewithal to come to the open doorway, staring at them and feeling the imminence of some revelation.  Viveka was never in the Circle; he would know what to think if she had been.  And the child is too old to be the product of her captivity in Cumberland.  She must have conceived Shiv before Meredith's death, and the Gallows' revolt.  But there are other situations when apostates, or even non-magical citizens, are at a Templar's mercy.  "Was he a client?"

     Viveka looks up, surprised, and belatedly Cullen realizes he has overstepped his bounds.  This is none of his business, unless it has bearing on her ability to withstand demons or avoid evil magic.  He holds up his hands and starts to apologize, but she chuckles and waves a hand.  "No, no," she says.  "I'm just not used to anyone _caring_ who the father is.  No, he wasn't a client.  I didn't do that kind of work at the Rose -- not with this face, you know?"  She gestures at herself, and it is not self-deprecating, but he sees what she means.  She is not homely, but she is _ordinary_ , and Cullen remembers the -- performers -- at the Rose all having distinctive looks.  Even the blood mage had been strikingly beautiful, before Cullen killed her.

     "No, this was boredom."  Viveka wipes a bit of snot away from the baby's nose, then scoops up Shiv to tuck against her shoulder.  She moves about the room, gathering her things.  "I saw a lonely-looking young Templar in the common room, too scared or broke to actually buy what he'd come for, and I brought him a drink.  He said, 'Wish you were available,' and I figured what the Void.  The sex _was_ lovely.  He was... enthusiastic.  You pent-up types are all nice like that."  Cullen feels his face heat as she sighs, reminiscing fondly.  "But you know, I didn't even bother to ask his name.  Not like I ever expected to see him again."  She sobers.  "Though I didn't think the reason for that would be the whole bloody city coming apart.  For all I know, he died in the fighting at the Gallows."

     Not rape, then; that is a small blessing from the Maker.  "Did he know what you were?"

     She turns to him, surprised and, he sees, momentarily confused.  Then she chuckles.  "For a minute I thought you meant, 'Did he know you were a waitress?'"

     Cullen blinks.  "I see."

     "He knew what mattered -- that both of us had an itch to scratch."  She shrugs.  "Everybody's got that, right?"

     Cullen nods absently, then realizes what she's doing, and frowns.  "There's no need for you to go elsewhere for the night."

     "Oh, I think there is."  The baby coughs again, and Viveka frowns a little at this, sighing.  "For one thing, we'll keep you up all night, otherwise.  I'll speak to the innkeeper, and grab Feynriel.  In the morning catch us in the common room at breakfast."  She hefts the pack of her possessions, then grins at him over her shoulder.  " _If_ you come down to breakfast."

     Then she is gone, and Cullen is at a loss.  The others think that he is -- and that Carver is --  He is not ready to think about this.  Sighing and rubbing a hand over his hair, he heads out of the room and downstairs, wondering what manner of Templar he must be if his mages are all so willful, and so _inappropriate_.

     The common room of the inn is crowded and rowdy, and the assault on Cullen's senses almost drives him back upstairs at once.  He has never liked such places.  Peat-smoke and stale beer hang in the air, a pall of reek.  The tables are all occupied and there's a three-person-deep layer of bodies around the bar; everyone is talking and laughing.  On a balcony above, a bard plays a lute while beside her, a thin young man sings something Cullen suspects is bawdy, though he does not bother to listen.  It's in Orlesian anyway. 

     He searches the crowd for a distinctive head of black hair, and does not find it.  Would Carver leave the inn without telling him?  Cullen lets out an exasperated sigh.  They will have to talk, at least, about what is acceptable and what is not.

     Cullen turns into a side foyer, ready to head back upstairs -- and here he pauses, frowning.  Yes:  a familiar whisper from down the hall, followed by a giggle and a thump.  Carver, and someone else.  Resisting the urge to put a hand on the hilt of his sword, Cullen moves down the corridor, warily.  And finds:

     Carver pressed against a cracked wall, kissing a woman.  His armor is half off -- the breastplate hanging by sidestraps only, the chain ties loosened -- which makes Cullen's jaw tighten because the only way to get the breastplate off is to take the _tassets_ off, and the only way to have the tassets off is to take the _sash_ off --  And yes, there is another man kneeling at Carver's feet, giggling as he loosens Carver's codpiece.  Carver parts from the woman's mouth long enough to make an over-loud "Shhhh!" at him, and all three dissolve into giggles.

     They are drunk as lords.  And both of Carver's would-be paramours are wearing Templar recruit armor.

     Oh, that is quite _enough_.  Cullen comes down the corridor, deliberately letting his boots clomp on the wooden floor, and it is a measure of just how drunk they all are that none of them notices until he is almost on top of them.  Then the woman looks up, sees a man wearing a captain's gorget and a forbidding expression _right there_ , and yelps, scrambling away from Carver.  She swats the other recruit, who has worked Carver's chain and gambeson and shirt open just enough to kiss the bare skin of his belly, and it takes two blows to make him heed.  Then the recruit stares up at Cullen, mouth open, so glaze-eyed that Cullen sets his jaw in disgust.

     "Oh, sodding _what_?"  Carver says, groaning, and Cullen stiffens.  The recruits stare at him, too, horrified, because Carver wears the armor of a junior knight and junior knights do _not_ speak so to captains.  Carver has forgotten to play his role.  "Don't tell me I'm -- "  He has to pause and think.  Maker, he's so drunk that Cullen thinks he sees fumes.  "Nnh.  Not allowed to.  Even have _fun_.  You sodding.  Shit.   _Captain Cranky_."

     Cullen grabs Carver by the front of his chain-shirt and hauls him away from the wall.  To the recruits, he snaps, "You disgrace the Order and Andraste Herself by acting like this in public.  Take yourselves back to your barracks -- _now_."

     The woman is the soberest of the three; she salutes.  The other recruit does too, though he is still on his knees, and facing the wall where Carver was.  Then Cullen heads upstairs, dragging Carver behind him and ignoring the mage's loud complaints when he barks his shin against the stairwell railing at one point.

     When the door is shut and the noise of below is only a muffled murmur in the background, Cullen shoves Carver loose into the middle of the room, where he stumbles but manages to keep his feet.  "Perform a blood cleansing rejuvenation.  Now."

     Carver laughs.  "Don't _want_ to do any sodding _practice_."

     Cullen steps forward.  His nostrils have flared; he bares his teeth.  "Do not make me strike you.  If you truly _were_ a recruit, I would."

     Carver flinches suddenly, his smile fading until he seems almost lucid as he stares at Cullen.  Lucid and so _hurt_ that for a moment he looks as though he might weep -- and suddenly Cullen understands many things.  But Carver slumps, closes his eyes, and finally obeys Cullen's command.  The rejuvenation is unstable, the magic skittering throughout his body when it should be concentrated in his liver and kidneys, but it does the task, and after a moment Carver sighs and gazes at him bleakly, completely sober.

     Cullen's anger is gone, now.  _It is so obvious._   This is his fault.  He has approached this as a single-layered thing, even though he knows it is more complicated.  Worse, he has treated Carver like a problem to solve, when the problem is _himself_.  And --

     When Cullen does not deliver the lecture he clearly expects, Carver just shakes his head and sighs, beginning to strip off the rest of his armor.  The way the mage is just yanking carelessly on the straps, he'll break them.  Cullen _tsks_ and comes over, brushing Carver's hands out of the way to manage the task himself.  Carver submits to this limply, not meeting Cullen's eyes.

     His silence troubles Cullen.  "What do you mean to do when we reach Ferelden?" he asks, just to get Carver talking.

     Carver shakes his head.  "Don't know.  I was thinking... I've heard they're trying to rebuild Lothering."

     "If they put another Chantry there, you may not be safe."

     "Yeah, maybe not."  His eyes shift at last to Cullen.  "You?"

     "Hmm?"  Somehow, the fool mage has gotten the straps of his cuisses tangled.  Cullen shakes his head and carefully unknots them.

     "You were already headed to Ferelden before you met me," Carver says.  "I guess, once you're there, you can dump me and go do whatever you were going to do."

     "I had originally intended to go back to Kinloch, and find Greagoir, my old commander.  To him I would have surrendered my sword, confessed my sins, and invited his judgment in the matter of Meredith's death."  Because Greagoir is the most honorable Templar Cullen knows.

     "Hnf."  Carver sounds completely disinterested.  "You said 'originally.'  What, you change your mind?"

     There; the knot is loose at last.  "Now I will be going to Lothering, of course."  Cullen crouches to strip off the rest of the leg pieces, tapping Carver's legs when he's ready for the mage to step out of the boots.

     Carver's staring at him as Cullen finally finishes and takes the armor pieces to the room's stand.  Once Cullen has racked Carver's, he removes his own armor, then his socks and trou; his shirt is more than enough for modesty.  He turns back to see that Carver is sitting on the edge of his bed, and -- ah, good.  Now the mage is less of despair and more of uncertainty, which he's trying to cover with nonchalance.  That is the Carver Cullen knows.

     "We're going to have trouble around Montsimmard," Carver says, shrugging.  It is an awkward change of subject, even for him.  "Bili -- one of those recruits I was with, the bloke -- said there's some kind of gathering there.  Templars from all around.  Might be a good idea to skirt it."

     Cullen nods and flips back the blankets on his bed.  "Then perhaps it is good that you _reconnoitered_ this evening."

     Carver makes a weary sort of chuckle, which is better than the bitter sort of chuckle he voiced before.  "I just wanted to forget for awhile, Cull.  Feel... real." 

     _Like a real Templar_ , Cullen hears, though Carver does not say.  He doesn't need to.  But Cullen reminds him:  "In moments of -- excitement -- Primal-inclined mages often spark, or shake the earth.  If you had done that, Carver, they would have been duty-bound to kill or arrest you."

     Carver sighs and seems to relax at finally being scolded.  "Yeah.  I know."

     Cullen sits to face him.  "I cannot protect you if you are determined to do harm to yourself."

     "I _know_ , Cullen, fuck."

     "Have you decided to withdraw yourself from my care, then?"

     Carver, in the middle of rolling his eyes, grows abruptly still.  "What?"

     Cullen explains:  "I do not own you, as you once reminded me.  I am with you because you want me.  If you no longer want me -- "

     "No!"  Carver sits forward in alarm.  "I never said that, anything like that."

     "But you have chosen to _act_ as if that's what you want."  At the stricken look on Carver's face, Cullen adds, "I will stay.  But you must heed me.  _Cooperate_ with me.  Is that acceptable to you?"

     Carver nods quickly, and Cullen exhales.  Then he lifts his hand.  "Come."

     Carver blinks, then wilts a little as he realizes this is an invitation to Cullen's bed.  "S'all right.  I don't --   Don't need that anymore."

     Very quietly Cullen says, "Do you trust me?"

     "Yeah."  Carver stares at him as if he's gone mad.  "' _Course_ I do."

     "Then _come_ , Carver."

     Carver stares at Cullen -- at his still-extended hand -- and finally shakes his head to himself.  "In for a bloody copper.  Cullen -- "  He draws a heavy breath.  "I'm not a _stone_ , man."

     Yes.  The other thing Carver wants, almost as much as he wants to be a warrior.  Cullen cannot change Carver's nature, but his own is a different matter.

     He says to Carver, again, "Trust me."

     Carver glowers at him, pained.  Then with a sigh, he rises and comes over, taking Cullen's hand.  Cullen slides beneath the sheets and tugs, and Carver slips in beside him, then lies there quietly waiting for Cullen to position him how he likes.

     Cullen sits up on his knees and strips off his shirt.  At this Carver's expression grows anguished; he starts to turn over, away.  Cullen pushes him back into place, then bends to kiss him.  Just before he reaches Carver's mouth, Carver jerks and pulls back; his eyes have gone wide, almost frightened.  He flicks a look around the room, wildly, then pinches himself.  "Not the Fade," he murmurs.  "You're not a demon?"

     "The demons wear my face?"

     Carver's eyes search and search his, wary, wanting.  "Sometimes.  Sometimes just your armor."  He licks his lips.  "They ask for things.  I always tell them to fuck off, but..."  But he has been tempted.  That is the way of things, with demons.

     Cullen strokes Carver's cheek, brushes a thumb over his lips.  "I am your Templar, Carver.  I do not _ask_ what is best for you."  Carver inhales, the want in his face turning hard-edged, and this time when Cullen bends for his mouth Carver meets him halfway, lips yielding and teeth open and tongue curling to make room for Cullen's already.

     It is a fierce, silent thing from then on.  Carver is all but shaking with need, all grabbing hands and desperation, and Cullen must gentle him carefully, firmly.  He murmurs of his desire in Carver's ear as he eases the mage's shirt off, keeping his voice so low that Carver grows still to listen.  He uses Carver's nipples to teach him not to cry out; the mage is wonderfully sensitive, and Cullen needs only to stop tonguing him to make Carver catch his breath and curse -- in a whisper.  He rolls Carver onto his belly and bites his way down the mage's back to teach him patience; Carver makes pleading sounds and grinds feverishly against the sheets.  But Cullen is almost undone at one point, when Carver sits up to finally haul off his trousers.  There is a mischievous look in his eye and he darts forward to take Cullen's cock in his mouth. Cullen permits this for awhile, using the chance to remind himself that this mage is willful and disobedient at the best of times; he must always be alert, around Carver.  But as Cullen is hard enough to ache by this point, and Carver is dangerously skilled -- sweet Maker, _is_ he -- after only a few moments Cullen must pull Carver away.  He is proud of his own willpower for doing so.

     Then Carver is beneath him, breathing hard and tugging at him and pressing up against him in a hungry way.  Cullen knows enough of the theory to realize what he wants.  They have no oil, however, and Cullen will not trust mere saliva; it is a Templar's duty to know his mage's limitations.  Cullen has heard of other ways, though, and some procedures are not so different between men and women, so he positions himself and puts a hand down to grasp them both, experimenting.  Oh, that is nice.  Then it is only a matter of instinct and alignment and steady, gradually intensifying movement.  It is _very_ nice.  He presses his face against Carver's cheek, into his hair, trying not to lose himself in the slide of skin, in Carver's fingers tight on his flanks and hips, in Carver's heels digging into his buttocks, in Carver's breath roughening and quickening until he is moaning the words _Please, just fucking please_ softly but audibly.  Cullen really should pause to silence him, because they will not always have privacy; mages cannot be allowed to forget circumspection when others are about, ever.  But --

     But it feels so very good, being with this man.  This _mage_ , but still... this man.  Carver is so strong and warm beneath him.  The unified pace of their soft breaths is like meditation.  Cullen thinks this and wonders how long it has been since he prayed, _sincerely_ prayed, sincerely gave a damn about anything in a world so broken that he is -- oh, he is -- oh, oh Maker, surely there _is_ a Maker, surely He cannot -- _oh_ \-- oh.

     Cullen keeps going after the light fades, because he's still hard and Carver is still needful.  Cullen slides an arm under the mage's hips to hold him in place and then grinds against him, a single relentless application of pressure, and he watches carefully while Carver writhes and bucks and comes apart, opening his mouth in a soundless cry.  There's no discharge of magical energy, though Cullen senses its wild churn within the mage; no need to Silence anything.  Good.

(He feels the rightness of this. Perhaps this is how it always should have been. Only with a Templar can a mage enjoy, safely.)

     Then it is done.  Carver flops limp and panting beneath him, and Cullen peels himself away reluctantly to climb out of bed.  He cleans himself first at the wash stand, sponging away sweat and stickiness, then freshens the sponge and brings it over to Carver, sitting down on the edge of the bed to mop him up.

     Carver lies still for this, but he is watching Cullen, searching his face, his posture.  "Wasn't gonna ever ask you," Carver says finally, softly.  "You're a Templar.  I figured you would never."

     Cullen appreciates the consideration.  Still --  "You are mine to protect," he says, wiping the divot between Carver's collarbones.  He's already gotten their leavings off Carver's skin; it's just nice to touch him, now.  "Including from yourself."

     Carver's face tightens.  "Is that why?  Another way to keep me on the straight and narrow?"  Cullen hears what he is really asking, however:  _Is that all?  Is it only duty, and nothing more?_

     Cullen looks up at him, stroking Carver's throat with one thumb, and doesn't bother to answer.  Carver isn't stupid.  If he but thinks a moment, he will know that there is no such thing as _only_ duty, for Cullen.

     Some of the tension in the mage's face eases as he understands.  Satisfied, Cullen gets up to toss the sponge back on the wash stand, then blows out the lantern.  When he climbs back into the bed, Carver is warm and waiting, having made room for him.  Once Cullen is comfortable, he settles into Cullen's arms as if he belongs there.  Which, of course, he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, maybe there'll be a *little* porn.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The calm passes, the storm returns, and Cullen and his mages go to war.

     In the morning Carver is up before Cullen.  Cullen half-wakes to hear the mage rummaging through his pack, muttering to himself, but the muttering does not seem to include any arcane chanting, so Cullen goes back to sleep.  When he wakes fully and sits up, Carver is sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him.  "Hey," he says.  Cullen mumbles a greeting back and assesses him quickly:  good color, alert gaze, none of the hovering misery that has consumed Carver for weeks.  Then, with as much shyness as Carver ever displays, the mage puts a little pot on the sheets between them.  Sword ointment.  Why --  Oh.

     They will smell rather more of bergamot than Cullen quite likes, but... well.  He picks up the pot.  Carver grins and shifts closer, unsubtle as ever.

     What follows is... diverting.

     After that, Cullen refuses any further sport, to Carver's vocal and vulgar disappointment.  But they have inconvenienced Viveka and Feynriel enough; he reminds Carver that they, too, are Cullen's responsibility.  So Carver opens the windows so that the room will no longer smell so thickly of sex and sword-oil, and he makes the rumpled bed.  They bathe while the room airs.  Then Cullen helps Carver figure out how to repair a damaged strap of his breastplate so they can gear up, and they head down to the common room. 

     When they come into the room, others look up, and for once do not immediately look away.  Cullen blinks at this, then glances at Carver and understands why.  The mage moves in perfect unison with Cullen as they trot down the short stair, matching him pace for pace and not smiling, but exuding confidence and warmth.  He wears the armor as if he was born to it.  It is what Templars are supposed to look like, and what they are supposed to _be_ \-- not weary and faithless and hopeless, as Cullen himself has become.  He could learn a lesson from Carver, perhaps.

     Breakfast is still being served on the sideboard, which makes Viveka smile when Cullen brings over a trencher of food and gives her a pointed look.  If they make it to breakfast, indeed.  He is a little nonplussed then, and Viveka howls laughter, when Carver declares, "That's mine," and reaches over to pluck one of the longer sausages off Cullen's trencher.  He grins and licks its tip in a way that makes Cullen ache with carnal impulses and simultaneously regret ever having touched the mage.

     (This thought vanishes later that night, when he stands before the inn room's window thinking of blood and fire.  Carver wraps strong arms around him from behind, banishing the phantom smell of corrupted lyrium with a touch.)

     Thus they pass another day at the inn, and finally Viveka thinks Shiv is well enough to travel.  So they set off again, planning a route that will skirt around whatever is happening at Montsimmard, making good time along Orlais' well-paved and -maintained roads.  Their pockets are heavy with coin, their packs full of supplies, and it is... different, suddenly.  Not so onerous a journey.  Not so wearying.  When they camp at night, instead of simply setting up and sleeping, there is talk.  Viveka dominates this, regaling them all with anecdotes of embarrassment and debauchery at the Rose, which Carver loves and Cullen can only sigh at.  Surprisingly, Feynriel contributes as well, telling them stories of the Dalish that his mother taught him.  It is a little unnerving to hear them in his monotonous voice, and perhaps only Cullen knows that the woman who told Feynriel these tales is dead by her own hand, heartbroken over her son's fate... but the stories are riveting enough that these things become only a minor impediment, with time.

     Cullen politely refuses, when they ask for his tales.  They know all they need to know about him, and anything else is for his own conscience to bear.  Carver speaks of the family he once had -- when he does talk, for he is surprisingly reluctant to contribute to the evening exchanges.  Cullen realizes why as they hear of Carver's father, a singularly strong-willed mage; his older sister, equally forceful and with a wry sense of humor; his younger sister, earnest and serious and quietly deadly; and even the family mabari -- but all of them are _dead_.

     "My mum's still all right," Carver says one night, when they are curled together in his bedroll and none of the others are awake to overhear.  This is how Carver tells his less-pleasant stories -- only in whispers, and only to Cullen.  "She's safe in Kirkwall, with her brother -- I guess he's family too, though he never really felt like it.  I gave them all the money I'd earned over the years we were there; along with what Bethy had been giving them, it was a lot.  Enough that they should've been able to pay the bribes to get the manor back -- we're nobility there, you know, for whatever good that did."

     Cullen nods.  He knows of the Amells.

     "But that's why I left, see."  Carver's shoulders have tightened a little, so Cullen caresses him until he relaxes.  "If I'd stayed in Kirkwall, Mother could never have found peace.  Eventually I would've broken her heart just like Marian and Bethy did.  I would've been killed in the streets working for that bloody gang, or caught by some Templar; they were roving the alleys by the time I left, accusing every other Lowtowner of being hidden mages.  Or I could've been killed by mages, since the handful who survived the Mage Underground still blame Bethy, and me, for Meredith breaking it up.  Law of averages and all...  So I kissed Mother goodbye and skipped town."  He sighs.  "Then I fall in with a bunch of bloody idiots who panic the instant they see a Templar, and get us captured and tortured.  If they'd just stayed calm, we'd have been fine.  Bloody Circle Mages."

     Cullen kisses his shoulder, smoothing a hand over the firm curve-and-rise of his bicep to soothe him.  "Your father was a Circle Mage."

     "Right, well, then, bloody Circle Mages except the ones who'd already _run away_ before the Circles came apart, how's that?"

     He's actually getting _more_ agitated.  Cullen shakes his head and reaches around to take Carver in hand.  After a few moments the mage utters a muffled sob, twitches violently, and comes into Cullen's palm.  He sags, perfectly relaxed now, and when he sleeps, it is so deep that there's no need for Cullen to guard his dreams.

     This becomes the way of things for weeks and miles, and it is blissful compared to what Cullen has lived.  Heartening.  Viveka and Carver begin to practice together, and for the first time Carver shows interest in learning more about magic.  Little Shiv says her first word, and it is _Feyn_ , to Viveka's great chagrin.  (Feynriel seems pleased, though that could be only Cullen's imagination.)  And Carver -- Maker.  The mage is happy again, _irritating_ again, too loud and uncouth and perpetually pestering Cullen for sparring again, for answers to pointless questions again.  For sex, too; sweet Andraste, the mage is insatiable.  But now that Cullen tends him most nights, Carver's temper is less chancy, and he is at least more biddable than he was, if not by much.

     With his mages safe and thriving, it would be easy for Cullen to feel something like hope for the future.  He does not because all Thedas is still a madhouse, and because he has done this before -- become complacent, put his trust in others' strength, buried his sense of righteousness in the vision of others.  And he has been disappointed again and again.  It is why he wakes sometimes in the night, full of the fear that he has _missed_ something, some corruption which is brewing under his very nose and which he hasn't _noticed_ , so that when it all comes apart it will be his fault.  It has always been his fault.  It will always be his fault.

     "You should find another Templar," he says on impulse one night.  Carver is relaxed beneath him, sticky and satisfied and half asleep.  "Someone worthy of you."

     He feels Carver's ribs tighten in a single laugh.  "Nope," the mage says.  "Don't want anyone else to kill me, if I ever go wrong."

     _Will you do the same for me?_   Cullen thinks, but does not say.  Because there are some things a mage should not be burdened with.  Those are a Templar's duty to bear.

     But he pulls Carver closer, and only because he can feel the strength in the mage's body does he relax enough to sleep.

     Everything goes wrong the next day.

#

     They are on an elevated portion of the Imperial Highway, with no turnoffs nearby, nowhere to hide, when they see a large party approaching in the distance.  Even from so far Cullen sees their colors, the lay of their armor, and knows them for Templars.  He glances at the others, but they are all calm; this has happened before, and there's been no trouble on the previous occasions.  He has drilled them in the proper way to salute and carry themselves.  They know to let Cullen do the talking if  necessary, and if more than that becomes necessary, they have false histories ready to deploy.  Cullen, of course, will tell only the truth -- but if it comes to that, then they are all ready to kill as they must.

     Cullen's belly clenches, his pulse quickening, as the party comes into view.  Forty knights, their armor spotless and their formation precise.  At their center, riding a handsome Tevinter charger, is a man whom Cullen recognizes, and who halts the column as he spies Cullen.  Cullen has no choice but to stop as well, and salute, because to do anything else would mean his party's immediate slaughter.

     "Knight-Captain Cullen," the man says, sounding both surprised and pleased.  He is a handsome Tevinter man of early elder years -- a former slave, the rumor has it, who escaped as a child and was reared by a Chantry orphanage after his finding.  "So you _are_ alive.  But you are going the wrong way, if you mean to join the force at Montsimmard."

     "Knight Vigilant Yunius," Cullen says, over his chest-pressed fist.  "Blessings of the Maker be upon you.  But I have business in Ferelden, and I cannot delay."

     "Delay it," the Knight Vigilant says, though he smiles as he gives this command.  "My army marches on Ferelden in one week."

     Cullen stares at him, and Yunius laughs.  Meredith never liked Yunius, Cullen recalls, because of that tendency of his to laugh at the most inappropriate times.  _Too damned Tevinter_ , she would always say -- quietly, of course, for Cullen's ears only.  _Never trust him_.

     Yes.  Well.  That is a given.

     "Come, come," Yunius says.  "I'm passing the night in my villa, not far from here, before I head north to Montsimmard to join the troops.  You and your men may guest with me for the evening.  Resupply."  His eyes flicker over Cullen's armor, and Cullen feels keenly the dings and scrapes that he has been unable to polish away.  "Talk.  Then, in the morning, you will all be free to go if you wish."

     There's no other choice, really.  It's not an invitation, however friendly it sounds; it is a command, and a Knight Vigilant's command cannot be refused by a mere Knight Captain.

     "I am your servant," Cullen says, and falls into line alongside the column.  Carver, Viveka, and Feynriel fall in too, quiet and tense.

#

     Yunius' villa, as he called it, is a sprawling monster of a thing, ostentatiously Orlesian -- but its gardens are full of Templars drilling or standing a wary guard, and its parlors contain a small army of Tranquil sewing banners and making weapons and armor.  There isn't a civilian or Chantry priest in sight, though the latter _should_ be present if the Templars are going to war.  How else to keep the troops' minds on righteousness, and prepare their souls for imminent ascension to the Maker's side? 

     There are no working mages, either, and that is a deeply wrong thing to Cullen's mind.  The strength of the Templars, throughout history, has lain in the fact that at least a few mages have always been willing to fight beside them.

     He casts an eye at his three as they walk through the villa's gates.  Feynriel is Feynriel.  Viveka is all over cool calmness, but then she has been in dangerous situations all her life.  Carver's jaw is tight, and his right hand is cocked rather more than it should be -- ready to go for his blade, if he must, which for once is a habit that might help him.  Safer for him than going for a magic spell.  But Carver is not a good-enough fighter to survive this many Templars, and the instant he resorts to magic --  Well.  Best to avoid that, if possible.

     He catches Carver's eye, and nods once.  _I will die to protect you_.  He has no idea whether Carver reads that in his face or not, but the mage relaxes, and that can only be good.

     As they pause in the courtyard, Yunius gives orders to his men, then dismounts and considers Cullen's group for a moment.  "But you must refresh yourselves," he says, and summons over a Tranquil from the side of the courtyard.  "Make ready the magisterial suite, please, and notify the quartermaster."  The Tranquil nods and heads out; Yunius frowns a bit at the bundle in Feynriel's arms.  "Your Tranquil may reside in our servant quarters with the others, Cullen -- but is that a mage-child?"

     Cullen senses rather than sees Viveka's sudden tension.  "It's too soon to determine whether the child is a mage, Knight-Vigilant," he says.  "Rumor has it the Chantry orphanages in Ferelden are still functional, so it was my intention to turn the child in there."

     "If a mage parent was involved, it's best to be proactive, don't you think?  Brand it now, to save it future corruption and anguish."  Yunius shrugs.

     "It would be difficult for a Tranquil infant to develop properly," says Feynriel, and Yunius blinks at him in surprise.  "Without motivation, one cannot learn language or reading or other skills which make my kind useful.  That course of action would not serve the needs of the Knight Captain."

     "A fine point," Yunius says wryly, eying Cullen.  "And an unusually astute Tranquil.  You made him?"

     "I did," Cullen says.  "An apostate who turned himself in to the Circle."

     "And you branded him."  Yunius sounds approving, and Cullen does not like it one bit.  "Never seen one demonstrate _loyalty_ before.  I suppose I'll have to brand the next few myself, see if that forges some sort of bond."  He eyes Feynriel.  "Take the infant with you, then."

     Feynriel looks at Cullen; Cullen nods.  To Cullen's great relief, Feynriel does not look at Viveka as he says, "You may of course be assured of the child's safety and good care, Knight Captain."  He turns to follow the Tranquil Yunius first gave orders to, and Cullen hears Viveka's soft exhalation behind him.

     Another Tranquil, a voluptuous young woman, shows Cullen and his party to a palatial set of chambers, full of canopied beds and full-plumbing bathchambers and even an indoor privy with a warming brazier set into its wall.  But the Tranquil remains in the room -- "To serve whatever needs you might have, Knight Captain," and why does that sound so wrong? -- so Cullen and the others cannot relax, cannot speak freely, cannot feel safe.  He directs all of them to bathe and groom themselves perfectly, and when they emerge they find that other Tranquil have been in to replace their old gear with brand-new gambesons and armor and even fresh underwear for each of them. 

     Except Cullen's armor set is not right.  He looks at the pretty Tranquil, who says, "The Knight Vigilant asks me to say, ser:  'It is appropriate, Cullen; be a good boy now and put it on, yes?'"

     Cullen's jaw tightens.  "Very well."  He dons the armor -- which is not a Knight Captain's, but a Knight _Commander's_.  It is wrong, he thinks as he looks into the mirror, afterward.  This place reeks of wrong. 

     What is wrong must not be borne.  Not by any Templar who is worthy of his oath.

     "Ser."  Carver comes to stand just behind him, looking at his reflection.  Cullen hears what Carver would really say, if they were not being watched:  _Hey_.  His eyes flick down, and Cullen follows the angle of his gaze to see his own hands, clenched into tight fists at his sides.  _Calm the fuck down_.

     Yes.  Cullen relaxes his hands, rolls his shoulders, and nods briskly to Carver, who nods back.

     Thus arrayed, they proceed to dinner.

     "I hear many interesting things of you, Cullen," Yunius says, in a jovial tone.

     There are three of Yunius' party to counter Cullen's three:  Yunius, and two very large Knight Corporals whom Cullen does not know.  The Corporals are too young to have much of value to contribute to the conversation; Cullen understands that they are guards.  All of them sit at a long table in  the villa's formal dining room, whose walls are laden with portraits of famous Templars.  Cullen recognizes some of them by meeting or description:  Lanesis, the current Knight Divine; Lambert, the Lord Seeker; others.  But there are portraits missing which should be there:  Alkrind, the Knight Divine who signed the Nevarran Accords.  Alistair, the almost-Templar who ended the Fifth Blight, and who has been honored by their order nevertheless.

     He focuses on Yunius again, and does not reply, since the man asked no question.  Yunius laughs. 

     "You need not fear my retribution, Cullen," he says.  "To the contrary!  I approve of everything you have done.  You learned well from your torment at Kinloch:  do not suffer the maleficar to live, do not suffer the mage's pride -- and do not suffer a Templar's weakness, either.  I do find it a bit... _romantic_ that you have travelled the land, slaying those of our kind who've strayed from the path.  Not the most _efficient_ solution to the problem.  Still, I can but respect your choices."  Yunius pauses.  "Please, Cullen, eat.  I would never poison you."  He smiles.

     Cullen unclenches his jaw, and bends to take a spoonful of the soup that sits before him.  When he does so, Carver and Viveka begin to eat, too.  He had not realized they were following his lead, unsure of formal Templar etiquette.  Sloppy of him not to notice.  He takes a deep breath, to focus.

     Yunius lifts a glass of wine in his direction.  "Better!  My chef has only improved since I made him Tranquil.  It is important that good food be appreciated."

     Cullen frowns in confusion.  "Your chef was an apostate, ser?"

     Yunius, in the middle of sipping wine, pauses for a breath.  He sets the glass down and smiles, and does not answer.

     Cullen's jaw tightens again.  But he forces himself to resume eating, and for a few moments there is silence.

     "But to slay your own _lover_ ," Yunius continues, shaking his head.  "That, I confess, I did not think you had in you, when last we met.  You seemed far too, hmm, _earnest_."  He sips more wine, amused.  "Meredith did always like you 'light untiring' types."

     Carver chokes on his soup, and everyone at the table looks at him.  While he mutters an apology, Cullen keeps his gaze on Yunius, who glances at Carver once.  He looks back at Cullen and raises his eyebrows.  Cullen does not acknowledge the unspoken question.

     "She was corrupt, ser," he says instead, because it is true.

     "So I hear.  But before the dwarven magic took her, Cullen, she saw mages as the threat they are."  Yunius eats a bite of meat from his plate with obvious relish.  It's so rare that it drips red.  "She was wise to call Annulment on the Gallows, whatever her motivations for doing it.  I've come to believe, as she obviously did, that the Circles themselves are a mistake.  Far simpler to make all mages Tranquil; it is more humane than slavery, and eliminates their threat."

     Carver's jaw is stone, Cullen notes.  Even Viveka is gripping her fork harder than she should, her nostrils flaring.  But their control is solid; neither emits even a whiff of magic.  That is good.

     "Meredith was more... compassionate than that, ser, towards mages," Cullen says, turning his gaze back to Yunius.  "Before her corruption, anyhow.  But she feared them, too."  As do all who agree with Alrik's Solution, he thinks, but does not say.  "That was her undoing."

     Yunius looks skeptical.  "I cannot see how a woman who attacks a full-strength Circle does so out of _fear_ , Cullen."

     "The fear is what drove her to seek the dwarven magic, to become more powerful.  _Magic_ is what truly killed her that day, not my sword."  He leans forward, fists clenching beneath the table.  "How can we guard against something if we allow ourselves to become dependent on it?  How can a Templar _fight_ evil if she has _become_ evil?  How can we call ourselves righteous if we cease to _protect_ , and instead _prey upon_?  It is unacceptable."  He pauses, then sets his jaw, bracing himself.  "Why do you mean to attack Ferelden?"

     Yunius considers his answer.  "Why, because its king is a traitor to the Order, of course," he says at last.  "Rumor has it _he_ used foul magic to survive killing the Archdemon.  It is unacceptable."  He smiles.

     "Then _challenge_ him, ser," Cullen says.  He is cold with suppressed fury.  "An honorable man must answer you on the dueling field if your challenge is just; even a king.  That is Ferelden law.  There's no need to subject the entire land -- a land which bore the brunt of the Blight -- to the chaos of war."

     "We cannot trust that a Templar who would treat with mages is honorable," Yunius says.  In spite of himself, Cullen twitches.

     But he also thinks, contemptuously:  _You are a coward, ser._

     "But I see you've guessed that there's more to it, so I shall explain fully."  Yunius gestures with his fork.  "Now that the Order has broken off from the Chantry, we require a means of support.  Ferelden is, outside of its Blighted bits, a fertile land, and the hand of a foreign ruler is not unknown to them.  We have... allies... here in Orlais who are very willing to help us with administration, once we subdue the populace."

     "Sodding _Void_ ," Carver mutters, not quite under his breath.

     "Pardon, Ser -- "  Yunius looks at Carver, eyebrows politely lifted.

     "Ser Carver," Carver says, and takes a deep breath.  "And... nothing, ser.  Pardon me for interrupting."

     His Ferelden accent is obvious.  Yunius' smile widens just a touch, and he glances at Cullen again before continuing.  By this Cullen knows:  Yunius no longer intends for any of them to make it out of the villa alive.  If they are lucky, Yunius will simply hold Cullen's Ferelden lover hostage against his good behavior.  If they are unlucky -- well.

     "In any case, King Alistair also freed their Circle of Magi -- oh, did you not know that?"  Yunius has noticed Cullen's blink of surprise.  "Ah, I suppose not.  Yes, Kinloch is empty but for a few Tranquil and Loyalists; it is said that Greagoir beggars himself to feed them, without Chantry funds.  But there are troubling signs that the good Knight Commander has been corrupted himself:  he allows the intact mages to remain so, and supposedly has even given the Brand of Tranquility into their care -- a _gesture of trust_ , he claims it."  Yunius sighs in real irritation.  "Would a Templar trust a mage so, without blood magic to influence him?  We would aid our brother of the Flame."

     "An excuse," Cullen says softly.  "Excuse after excuse after excuse."

     He feels Carver's foot nudge his under the table and ignores it.

     Yunius gazes at him for a long moment, expression unreadable, and then he smiles.  "Well," he says.  "I suppose that is my answer."

     "To what question?"

     "Whether you can be won over, Cullen.  _Knight Commander_ Cullen."  He smiles.  "I am told you protested the new armor, but I have the authority to promote you.  In this case I simply acknowledged the rank you have _earned_ , by force of arms.  That is how matters should be decided among warriors, you see -- sword to sword, blood settling any petty moral vagaries.  You defeated Meredith because you were right.  Her death _made_ you right.  And I would have you at the head of my army -- the great Knight Avenger, slayer of Meredith, savior of Kirkwall -- because _we_ are right in what we seek."

     It is a blatant offer.  Status, safety, and the safety of his lover, in exchange for Cullen's willingness to serve as a figurehead.  Cullen narrows his eyes.  This man talks too much to be a good Templar.

     When Cullen says nothing, Yunius presses his case, his voice rising in his passion.  "What I desire is _control_ , Cullen.  To see our Order ascendant, without the Chantry's deadweight to bear it down.  To see righteousness imposed throughout Thedas, and all citizens safe from the threat of magic.  Does it not trouble you to see our brethren so dissolute and directionless now?  So many of us have become mere brigands, using the Flame as an excuse for pettiness and greed and cruelty.  I would see us restored to what we are meant to be:  the Maker's own army, sweeping all sin before us in Andraste's name.   _This is what you have fought for_ , Cullen."

     Is it?

     For a moment Cullen wavers.  Because... he _has_ grown weary of killing his own.  He does not like leaving mages to their own devices, when so many of them need _help_.  He has wanted another way, hasn't he?  A way to return to the days when the Order was a proud thing, and when right and wrong seemed so clear.

     But.  He looks at Carver, even though this will only confirm Yunius' scheming.  Carver blinks, nonplussed, and blushes just a little.  He does not look away, though.  Carver's far too strong for that.

     And Cullen thinks, again, _He needs a Templar who is worthy of him_.

     "I," Cullen says, setting down his fork, "have never fought for material or political gain.  I," and he pushes back his chair, "would _not_ fight for such, ever.  I did not kill Meredith _to win an argument_."  He pushes himself to his feet.  "And there is nothing righteous about what you have been doing.  I call challenge upon you, ser.  Will you face me honorably in single combat?" 

     Utter silence falls for a moment.   Then Yunius sighs, heavily.  "I'm sorry, Cullen.  I'm afraid I cannot risk myself so, not on the eve of victory."  He glances at his Corporals; they rise as well, unlimbering their shields.  "Damn the waste, but... Brechus, Lilling, you may kill the Knight Commander."

     And Cullen smiles, for the first time since he gazed upon Meredith's corpse and felt his heart and faith -- and perhaps a bit of his mind -- shatter into smoking shards. 

     "You may certainly _try_ ," he says, and draws his sword.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An explosion of fury, an understanding, and maybe -- finally -- a bit of hope.

_He cannot help but love her when he meets her.  She's just so strong._

_And he needs that strength so much.  After Kinloch, he is... he is...  there is a hollow place within him.  It is, he suspects, the place the demon was clawing into his soul, the home she meant to inhabit once she finished the sweet repast of his sanity and willpower.  But Solona, thank the Maker, sealed the Veil before that could happen.  She, and Greagoir, and Irving, all called Cullen strong for withstanding the demon's torments, but he knows the truth.  He broke.  It just wasn't a **complete**_ _breaking._

_Meredith patches the hole in him.  Her faith is like the sun, warming and cleansing; her prowess in battle makes him yearn to be better; her clarity of vision eases the doubts that gave the demon purchase in the first place.  When he sees that she is lonely, and that she looks at him wistfully now and again, he makes himself available to her, a silent offer.  The comfort of his body is the least he can give her, after all she has given him.  She's beautiful in her strength, and it is his duty as her Captain to help her.  To protect her, if even from herself._

_For a time she refuses his offer.  Rank considerations, propriety, the gap of years between them, his Fereldan origins.  But she is only human.  One night, she takes his hand and pulls him into her quarters, and he is happy, so happy, to be needed._

_He sees the changes when they begin, and thinks nothing of them at first.  It troubles him, yes, that she permits Alrik to use the brand on Harrowed mages, and that so many of the knights seem flush with lyrium and coin.  He tries to root out the corruption and cannot; it is everywhere.  It is right under his nose, glowing on her sword-stand through the long dark nights._

_(He too sleeps beneath that red glow at first, on those nights when she needs him.  His dreams become strange.  It reminds him too much of the time in the cage, and he begins finding excuses not to stay the night.)_

_The changes progress.  He does not want to believe, when he sees her compromising the beliefs that once they both treasured._

_He does not want to disapprove when she reads his report on knights working with slavers, and declares it unimportant._

_He does not want to raise his sword to her, on the day that she snaps, when the mages look to **him**_ _of all people and plead for his protection.  He does not want to take responsibility.  But..._

_But..._

_Is it not a Templar's duty?  How can she have forgotten this?_

_He does not want to kill her.  But he does what he must._

_And the act leaves nothing of him, nothing, save the duty that drove him to it.  With her corpse smoldering behind him, he walks into the night with sword in hand and death in his heart, and he does not want to find himself again.  He waits for someone, an enemy,_ anyone _, to kill him, but no one does.  As he seeks the absolution of blood, he finds only a desperate, angry, insufferable young mage who demands that he be a Templar again, in truth as well as name._

_So that is what he becomes.  That is all he is.  That is all that matters._

#

     There follows a time of forgetting.  This is what happened to him after Kinloch, too, and after Meredith.  The part of him that cannot bear what he has seen and experienced shuts down, and the part of him that is capable of surviving it comes to the fore.  Eventually the two parts will switch places again, and he will recover himself.  He's almost grown used to this.

     In the moment he does not think, but later, he will remember.  Yunius' guards dying first.  They are actually capable warriors, but no one in the room understands just how much Meredith changed in that last year.  To defeat her, Cullen had to go somewhere beyond _capable_.  The guards fall and Yunius himself rises, eyes wide at the efficiency with which Cullen has dispatched what must have been his best warriors.  Poor judgment; Yunius should have expected to fight.  Too much the politician.

     Cullen will remember thinking, as Yunius' blood washes the floor, _This place requires a cleansing_ , and heading for the door.

     He will recall that he falls into a kind of rhythm, instinctively working with the mages who follow in his wake.  Viveka clears the way:  she is Coterie-trained, and the Coterie does business with the Tal Vashoth, so it is unsurprising that she can wield their balls of seething force-and-lightning to devastating effect.  This keeps the enemy Templars from getting close enough to Smite any of them.  Carver guards the rear:  he stays close to Cullen, casting rejuvenating spells on all of them and throwing the occasional Stonefist when someone comes at them from behind.  (Later, Cullen will approve of the mage's improved mana regeneration.)  The villa's architecture helps too; the corridors are Orlesian-narrow, and their enemies cannot flank them easily.  This leaves Cullen free to do what he does best.

     (He continues to smile throughout.  It is a rictus grin, a baring of teeth, a ferocious snarl -- but there is pleasure in it, too.  That he will not deny, when the realization comes.  He accepts his sins.)

     But there's so much blood by the end of it.  He remembers standing in Yunius' courtyard, sword hanging from one hand and shield from the other.  Both are dripping.  His head hangs; his arms ache; he is exhausted.  Something drips from the tip of his nose.  His hair is sodden.  His clothes, beneath the armor, cling to his skin.

     But he feels clean, he will remember later.  A source of corruption has been cleansed from the world.  He has done right, however brutally.  He has done his duty.

     "Blessed are those who stand before the corrupt and the wicked," he whispers.

     "And do not falter," says Carver, who gently wipes the blood from his face.

#

     There follows a gap of time.

     Some of it blurs past:  the stench of blood and offal, a sense of overwhelming weariness, the pounding cold of a waterfall.  Carver amid all of this, urging him onward when he aches to stop, scrubbing his skin and hair, finally laying him down to rest.

     When Cullen at last returns to himself, he is sitting in a hard wooden chair by an old brazier, in a room that is otherwise chilly and high-ceilinged.  He looks around and first sees a broken-down carriage, dusty and disused.  Then he spies Feynriel, who stands by a window with a crossbow in his hands.  The Tranquil glances around at Cullen's stirring, then comes over.  "Knight Commander."

     Cullen winces.  "Captain," he corrects.

     "You have been named Commander by a Knight Vigilant of the Order.  It is my understanding that this qualifies as a field promotion -- "

     "Yes, yes."  Pointless to argue with the Tranquil, or note that he subsequently killed the Knight Vigilant and thus has annulled the promotion.  "What has happened?  Where are the others?"

     Answering the last question first, Feynriel points:  on the other side of the brazier, curled in their bedrolls, are Carver and Viveka.  Viveka holds Shiv close; the baby snores faintly.  There's a jumbled pile of armor near them -- he winces for the careless way each pile is stacked -- and wet clothing hangs near the brazier, drying. 

     To the first question, Feynriel says, "Two days ago, you killed everyone in Knight Vigilant Yunius' villa.  The others and I brought you here.  They, and you, have been recovering, since."

     "I killed -- "  That is impossible.  "There were at least forty men within that villa's walls."

     "You killed forty-two within my viewing."  Feynriel turns, picking up a small pot of water that has been warming beside the brazier:  melted snow.  He offers this to Cullen.  "However, by the time I was able to escape the Tranquil quarters and rejoin you, many were already dead. Mage Viveka and Mage Carver between them took another thirty-four.  I saw twelve who were mortally wounded at the time of our leaving, and without an expert healer will be dead by now."  He considers.  "It is possible that a few escaped.  By the end, many fled from you.  Mage Carver attempted to persuade you at one point that you had done enough.  You put him aside, and did not stop until every Templar you saw was dead or dying."

     Cullen takes the pot and sips automatically, but his hand is shaking.  The muscles are hot and sore from overuse, even despite Carver's magical aid.  Perhaps his hand shakes for other reasons, too.

     "Your mages are well, Knight Commander," Feynriel continues, which makes Cullen blink at him.  It isn't the first time Feynriel has shown himself to be unusually astute.  The Tranquil glances toward the sleeping pair, who are clearly still exhausted; neither of them even stirs at the sound of voices.  "We found lyrium in the villa's storerooms and can be ready should magic be required.  None of us has taken harm.  We have eaten well and no one pursues us."

     Cullen closes his eyes.  "Good.  All of those things are... very good."  It is all he has, but he'll take it.

#

     There follows a time of recovery.

     They spend another day in the disused carriage house that they have found, which Carver thinks is actually part of Yunius' estate.  They're only a few miles from the villa; it took everything the mages had to drag Cullen this far after the fugue of rage left him, and he collapsed.  Behind the carriage house is a little stream with a waterfall; that is where Carver took Cullen to get the blood off.  This apparently took hours.  "You were...  It was pretty bad," the mage says, looking away.  Cullen nods, accepting this evasion.  But he notices the new sword they have put with his gear.  Again Carver looks uneasy.  "The Tranquil at the villa gave it to me as we were leaving.  Your old one... we had to leave it behind."

     By which Cullen guesses:  too many strikes through bone.  When a blade has been chipped and cracked enough, it cannot be cleaned or repaired.

     (He tries not to think of this as a metaphor for himself.)

     The new sword is a good one, well-balanced and fine-edged.  Officer-issue, carrying several standard Tranquil-made enchantments.  Still... that evening after Cullen practices with it to get used to the grip, he takes up his battered old shield and polishes it carefully.  It is the shield that Meredith gave him, in better times.  He will try his best to keep it intact.

     Viveka, enterprising soul that she is, shows Cullen the result of her own pillaging:  several dozen vials of lyrium, pre-mixed in appropriate doses for Templars or mages -- and best of all, a whole saddlebag heavy with coin, tied and wrapped in neat ten-sovereign cylinders.  Cullen recognizes the wrapping at once.  "Duty pay," he says, dimly horrified.  "This is meant for Yunius' army."

     "Well, it won't be much of an army once they figure out they aren't getting paid," Carver says, grinning fiercely.  Cullen stares at him, but -- the mage is right.  The Templars of old, who served out of faith and duty, might have been persuaded by a worthy commander to risk their lives for nothing.  Times have changed, though, and Yunius is dead, and few if any of the Templars serving him were doing it in the Maker's name.

     "We need to leave," Cullen says, his blood chilling as he understands.  Very soon, an untold number of amoral Templars, hot with thwarted battle-lust and a sense of entitlement, will rampage through the Orlesian countryside unchecked.

     "We were only waiting for you," Carver says, reaching up to smooth his hair.

     So they set forth again.

     This time they avoid towns, because if anyone did survive the massacre at the villa -- Maker, Cullen hopes no bards hear it phrased that way -- then all of Orlais will know that the Knight Avenger is within its borders, traveling with two mages disguised as Templars, a Tranquil, and a baby.  But they are in the Dales now, amid the deep quiet forests which once gave the elves hope for the future, and it is easy traveling again.  Carver sets snares each evening, which gives them meat to supplement their stores.  Feynriel realizes that one of his mother's songs contains descriptions of edible plants, and he vanishes one evening -- to Cullen's great annoyance -- returning several hours later with his shirt-tail full of tiny, many-colored wild potatoes.  They were seeded throughout the woods by his ancestors, he says, and they taste so good after weeks of dried fruit and boiled squirrel that Cullen forgets to chastise him.

     But.

     In the evenings Cullen watches Viveka nurse Shiv, and some part of him reverberates with a great, burgeoning sadness.  It has been in him all along, he knows now, so grim that he has mistaken it for anger, so powerful that it has blotted out nearly everything else within him.  He mourns Meredith.  He mourns the other lives he has taken, however necessary they were.  He mourns that some part of him has become so hair triggered, so quick to kill, that he cannot even properly call himself a Templar anymore.  He has destroyed so many, and protected so very few.

     In the nights when he lies awake, hearing again the screams of Yunius' men and the crackle of Meredith's burning flesh, Carver touches him tentatively, a silent offer.  And Cullen _wants_ , for his desire no longer shames him, but.... he cannot bring himself to accept the sweet moments of forgetfulness he could find in Carver's body.  Lovemaking is a thing of life, of wholesomeness; he is not  wholesome, and he is a bringer of death.  He holds Carver, however, because that much is his duty, and... because he is weak, in spite of everything.  He cannot give up on Carver as he should, for Carver's own good.  "I failed Meredith," he whispers, late in the night when the fire has died down.  "I failed my friends, at Kinloch.  I've even failed the Order, Carver.  You need a Templar who will not falter."

     "The sodding Order failed _you_ ," Carver replies, tightening his arms around Cullen.  Cullen likes this, though it shames him somewhat.  He feels safer for the mage's strength.  "They've forgotten what they're supposed to be about.  Just because _you_ remember doesn't make you weak.  It makes you stronger than all those fuckers, Cull."

     If only he could believe this.

     With the highway nearly straight and the weather in their favor, they make good time.  Before long they reach the stark, tundra-frosted hills that edge the northern Frostbacks.  All roads lead to Orzammar here, and by day they walk between the looming, impassive statues of the dwarven Ancestors.  By night they watch in pairs, because the road is not as safe here:  there are darkspawn beneath their feet, and the shadows beneath the trees seem starker.  They find a party of highwaymen at one point, large enough to have given them trouble -- but all are dead, hacked to pieces, and Cullen is not curious enough about the perpetrators to interrupt the wolves and spiders squabbling over their remains.

     It is here, too, that they must make decisions, when the reach the splitting of the road at Gherlen's Pass.  Carver knows only rumors of Lothering's revival; it's a long way south for the chance of finding nothing at the journey's end.  Viveka "knows some people who know some people" in Denerim, by which Cullen gathers she's speaking of the local thieves' guild.  "But I'll go wherever you go," she says, shrugging as she looks at Cullen.  "It's hard to get by alone, especially when I've got this little one to hand."  She grins down at Shiv, who grins back -- but then, she sobers.  "Somebody offs me in an alley, there'll be no one to look after her.  I'd rather stick with someone I know will lift a finger to help."

     It is touching that she trusts him so.  If only he was worthy of her faith.

     As for Cullen --

     When he stands looking east from the highway, over the trees and the glassy expanse of Lake Calenhad, he can see the tower of Kinloch Hold amid the distant haze.  It is... strange, to see it again.  Within its walls his heart was chipped and his mind cracked, and the innocent boy he was died screaming in a magic cage.  And yet... he feels something like yearning as he gazes at the tower.  He thinks of Greagoir, and his original plan to beg his old commander's judgment, and... and it does not feel wrong.

     They camp for the night at a permanent travelers' lean-to, to discuss the matter and make their decision in the morning with full bellies and rested heads.  Whatever the decision is, the mages assure Cullen, they want to stay with him.  Which means that the choice is effectively his.

     He has not decided by midnight, when he stands to wake Carver and switch off the watch -- but then tenses as, from the north along the road, he hears something.  He glances at Viveka, who nods tightly; she hears it too.  Running feet.  _Many_ of them.

     Carver and Feynriel are up by the time the owners of those feet come into view:  six elves, running nearly full-out and bedecked in armor like nothing Cullen has ever seen.  It is light, and obviously hard, yet the pauldrons and limb-pieces resemble overlapping leaves, and the belly-plating looks like tree-bark.  "Dalish," says Feynriel, and Cullen has only a moment to puzzle over this before the elves are upon them.  But they do not attack, instead slowing to a trot a few paces off, and finally stopping before them.

     Their leader is blond and male, and young, Cullen thinks, though he has never been good at gauging elven ages.  Cullen has a good fifty pounds on him, but he can see the wiry strength in the elf's frame, and the handles of the longknives on his back are worn with use.  "Hold, shemlen," he says, noting Cullen's ready shield.  "We mean you no harm."

     "Like fuck you don't," Carver mutters, before Cullen looks him silent.  The mage has a Stonefist ready to throw, which Cullen thinks is progress -- but his sword is still on his back, and Cullen's fairly certain Carver will resort to it if he feels pressed.

     Best that none of them feel pressed.  "We have no quarrel with the Dalish," Cullen says, though he straightens from his guard-stance, and lowers his blade to emphasize this.

     The elf smiles thinly.  "We speak, in this case, for another shemlen, with whom our clan is allied.  He feared to miss you here at the pass, since he must travel more slowly; he sent us ahead to fetch you, and ask that you come to speak with him."

     Cullen has had enough of orders disguised as requests.  No one who sends six heavily-armed elves to ask a question of one man is likely to take no for an answer, easily.  "We have no interest in speaking with anyone," he says flatly.  "Please leave us in peace."

     The elf sighs.  "Your refusal was not unanticipated.  I am bidden to tell you:  Alistair, King of Ferelden, is the man who would speak with you -- Cullen, last true Templar of the Order.  And if you will hear him, he has a proposal which might interest you.  A way to a new future for Templars and mages, in Ferelden and perhaps all Thedas.  Now will you come?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Argh! I should've called this story "The Last Templar". I never think of good titles 'til the damn things are almost finished.
> 
> One more chapter and done, I think.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An ending, and a beginning.

     Another Templar, at the head of another army.  This is not how it should be.  It would trouble Cullen more if he had not dealt with it before so recently.  He and his mages will not survive killing a king, however, so he bides his temper while these strangers lead him before Alistair.  He will not act, unless he is given no other moral choice.

     They lead him through an encampment of thousands of men, scattered across the floor of the Gherlan's Pass valley.  Cullen has never seen an army before, and has no way to judge the potential efficacy of this one, but he sees smithies and commissaries and mess tents; there are mazes of neatly-dug latrines; there are wheeled, cumbersome siegeworks positioned near the center of the whole mass.  But he spies patches of difference within this group:  a large contingent of what can only be Dalish Elves, whose camp is nowhere near as messy or noisy as that of the humans around them; a knot of dwarves camping under a jutting rock, perhaps so they don't have to look at the frightening sky so much; and a tiny knot of what can only be Tal Vashoth, sitting quiet and calm 'round their fire.  It is a different configuration of the same forces deployed against the Archdemon and its horde, Cullen remembers hearing -- but what is this army for, now?  Nothing good, most likely.

     The elf leads them down into the valley, and as they walk, Carver catches Cullen's eye.  The mage is worried, and he has good reason to be.  Have they journeyed all this way only to reach a land on the brink of war?  Is there nowhere they can find peace, and a place?

     Cullen sets his jaw at this reminder of his duty.  He must _make_ them a place.

     There's a series of large tents near the army's core, and Cullen fixes his gaze on the largest of them.  The elf, however, leads him to the smallest, which bears a coat of arms that looks vaguely familiar to Cullen's eye.

     And inside:  the king.

     King Alistair is Cullen's age, and Cullen's build, and there is something about him -- a weariness, a weight -- which makes Cullen wonder if this is how others see him:  perpetually tired, youth devoured by the cares of the world.  The weariness in this case is eclipsed almost at once by Alistair's big, not-entirely-false smile; yes, the ways of politics are not quite those of a warrior.  Still, despite the smile, Cullen thinks at once that here is a brother of the shield; here is a man who knows a Templar's burden. Nations cannot be possessed by demons, of course, but they can go mad and wreak havoc in much the same way, and Alistair has devoted himself to the task of keeping this nation -- mostly -- safe and sane.

     "So you're him," Alistair says, and Cullen blinks at the realization that the king has been assessing him in turn.  "Younger than I thought you'd be.  Smaller, too; rumor had it you were something like a human bereskarn.  Bit disappointing, that."

     Cullen blinks.  "The elf said you had a proposal."  The elf in question has come in with them, and lifts an eyebrow at Cullen; Cullen ignores him.

     "Oh, right to business!  Suppose I spend too much time around politicians."  He sighs.  "Can't be helped, certainly, but you don't know how refreshing you are, Knight C-Commander."  He blinks, looking at Cullen's armor.  "Though I was apparently unaware of your promotion."

     Cullen grimaces.  "Knight Vigilant Yunius made an offer.  I did not accept."

     "And rejected it rather ferociously, I understand!  Still, you've got the commander's gorget now, and you'd be _acting_ Knight Commander if you'd stayed in Kirkwall, so it's fitting."  The tent is sparsely furnished, and there's only one chair, plain but positioned at one end of the space like a throne.  Alistair eschews this in lieu of leaning against a slightly-rickety map table at the center of the tent.  "I wanted to thank you, Knight Commander.  I don't know if you realize it, but when you killed Yunius and his chief officers -- and apparently created some confusion with their duty pay?"

     "We stole it," Cullen says flatly.

     "Won it as spoils of glorious battle," Viveka suggests; Cullen glowers at her, and she rolls her eyes.  "Oh, fine, stole it."  She's picking up too many of Carver's habits; Cullen shakes his head.

     Alistair stares at them, then laughs heartily.  "A little of both, perhaps.  Regardless -- what you did stopped a war before it could begin.  Not all of Orlais was involved, you see, just a few noble houses who chose to defy Empress Celene, but if they'd attacked, it would have meant Ferelden versus Orlais, part two.  And now that Yunius' army is broken -- and rampaging unchecked throughout the southern Orlesian countryside, mind you -- the Empress has asked our aid in restoring order.  Since, you know, we happen to have an army right here."  He smiles, and abruptly there is a remarkable amount of craftiness in the man's face.  "We've agreed to do it in exchange for a small concession of territory.  Nothing particularly valuable... just the Dales."

     Cullen blinks, then glances at the elf, who smiles the same crafty, not-quite-peaceable smile.

     "Wait," blurts Carver.  "You mean _we_ are invading _them_ now?"

     Ailstair manages to look mildly hurt.  "Well, only if you want to _call_ it that."

     "You shove an army into somebody's country, I don't know what the Void _else_ you'd call it -- "

     "Carver," Cullen says, and the mage sighs but subsides.  Really, he has no sense of propriety.

     Alistair chuckles again, however.  "Well... _technically_ you're right, it _is_ an invasion.  But only as far as Montsimmard, and only to rout Yunius' leftovers, and only because we were asked very nicely.  Our presence also gives Celene the cover she needs to wipe out her enemies, most of whom are the Orlesian nobles who backed Yunius."  He grimaces.  "Although now I might have to marry her.  Hn.  Well, the salient fact is this, Knight Commander:  instead of fending off an invasion, we are now cementing an alliance.  You have strengthened Ferelden, and saved countless lives."

     At this, Cullen blinks again.  Countless lives.  _Saved_.

     A messenger ducks into the tent, and goes over to whisper in Alistair's ear.  He listens intently, then straightens and frowns at them.  "And I haven't much time.  To cut right to business myself --  Knight Commander, I am considering making a request of you."

     Cullen frowns.  "You know nothing of me.  Why would you request anything?"

     "Oh, I know what my spies have told me about you -- the truth beneath the exaggerations in the tales and songs."  Alistair folds his arms, regarding Cullen evenly.  "And we've met before, you know.  You were hardly in a position to remember my face, however -- as Solona and I had just freed you from Uldred's magical cage."

     Cullen does not flinch this time.  It is a test, he can tell.  This man is watching him, gauging his reactions, trying to fathom something about him.  "I see."

     Alistair nods to himself.  "And I know that since Kirkwall, you have traveled the land slaughtering corrupt Templars and rescuing a number of mages."  His eyes shift to Viveka, then Carver.  "For unknown reasons."

     "Because it was sodding _right_ ," Carver snaps.  This time Cullen does not try to quell the mage.  He's right, after all.

     Alistair says nothing for a moment, until Carver frowns at this scrutiny.  "Perhaps," Alistair says, his voice suddenly hard, "because he wanted a lover who could not say no."

     Cullen suppresses a sigh.  But Carver, to his surprise, does _not_ explode in fury.  "No," the mage says tightly, " _that's_ just because I sodding _wanted_ to fuck him.  Nothing to do with why he rescued me.  He's not that _sort_."

     Alistair considers this, then glances at Viveka.  "And you, miss?"

     Viveka blinks.  "What?  Oh, no, Cullen's not really my type.  Nice to listen to the two of them going at it when a girl's bits get twitchy and I need to give myself a hand, but otherwise it's not like that."

     All of them except Feynriel stare at her for a moment, expressions frozen at various degrees of appalled.

     "The Knight Commander has not coerced me into a sexual liaison, either," Feynriel says into this silence.  "I am capable of saying no, and would leave if I found existence in his company unacceptable."  He seems to consider.  "I would find a sexual liaison with the Commander acceptable if he wished it, but he does not."

     Cullen feels his cheeks heat.  Alistair, to his credit, coughs into his hand once in visible discomfort.  "...Sweet Maker, I asked for all that, didn't I?"  He exhales.  "You must forgive me for, er, prying into personal matters, all of you.  But I needed to know what sort of Templar I was dealing with.  I was a recruit of the Order long enough to know what goes on in the shadowed spaces of any Circle."  He focuses on Cullen, sobering.  "And to know that the Order, as it currently exists, cannot be permitted to continue.  It has become the very corruption it was meant to guard against, and a threat to more than maleficarum.  When my army crosses that border, I mean to declare every Templar who does not surrender an enemy of righteousness, and hunt them down in the Maker's name.  I have discussed the matter with most of the other rulers of Thedas.  After a number of recent Chantry lootings and priest-killings by dissolute Templars wanting lyrium... even the Divine concurs."

     _Hunted down like apostates_.  It is only what the Order has brought upon itself, but... Cullen nods slowly, accepting the bitter taste of this justice.

     "Where does that leave mages, though?" asks Carver.  He is visibly troubled.  "Without the threat of Templars, well...  some of us'll run amok.  That's just the truth.  And we won't be able to rebuild the Circles -- for those that want 'em -- because we won't be able to protect them.  Not without using magic on people, and..."  He grimaces.

     "Yes, I know, and you're right."  And here Alistair straightens.  "Which is why I am willing to consider an alternative, if you will help me refine it."

#

     Cullen chooses to go to Kinloch.

     They reach it three days later, following the highway north around Calenhad's Crown.  These are three days of relative silence as they leave Alistair's army behind; there are few settlements up this way, where the land is stony and frozen and the sea's pirates are entirely too close.  Carver and Viveka say little, though Cullen sees them looking at each other now and again.  He can guess at the reason for their worry.  The fear of being locked up is something no apostate stomachs easily.  Cullen overhears them one evening as he returns from bathing in the lake, because Carver, as usual, isn't bothering to lower his voice.  " _No_ ," the mage is saying, sounding annoyed.  "He would never."

     Cullen steps into the clearing.  As Feynriel is the only other _he_ present, and they all know there's nothing Feynriel wouldn't do if he thought it logical, there's no one else they can be speaking of.  And sure enough, both Viveka and Carver look up at him guiltily.  Carver has Shiv in his lap, playing with her; Shiv laughs happily, in sharp contrast to the tension Cullen feels around the encampment.  He ignores it and crouches by the fire to warm his hands, and that is the end of the argument, apparently.

     When he holds Carver that night, he says, "I would not."

     "I bloody _know_ ," Carver replies, and that too is the end of it.

     They come to the Tower at last, and it is so _unchanged_ , so much what Cullen remembers for good and for ill, that he can only stare at the great looming hulk of ancient stone for a long while.  It feels like coming home.

     _Home is where they have to let you in_ , he thinks dully.  _No matter what you've done while you were away_.

     Carver takes his hand.  Viveka bumps her shoulder against his.  He is grateful, so grateful, for their presence.  They remind him that he is still a Templar, however weak or unworthy he might be.

     It's still Carroll manning the ferry, and he's still as lyrium-addled as ever, though he stares in wordless shock when Cullen greets him.  "You've been gone a long time," he says, finally.  "Things have gotten bad while you were away."

     "Yes, I know," says Cullen.  "Please take us across."

     "You going to fix everything?"

     Cullen cannot even try to smile.  "I don't know."

     Carroll sighs.  "You could at least _pretend_.  Well, come on, then."

     Only one Templar stands at the gate, and she looks barely old enough to lift a sword.  She goggles openly at Cullen's armor, and at Feynriel carrying the baby, and at Carver's sword, as they pass within.  It's quiet in the entrance foyer while they wait for the Tranquil on duty to take word upstairs.  Dust motes spin in the slanting shafts of afternoon light from the upper windows; not enough apprentices about to do the chores, Cullen thinks -- then grimaces as he remembers why.

     Then the main doors are opening, and Greagoir is coming toward him, posture tense and expression grave even as his eyes search and search Cullen's face.  "My boy," he says -- and then the awkwardness dissolves.  "I never... Maker smile upon us, it's _good_ to see you again."

     Something in Cullen snaps.  He steps forward, and reaches, and does not even know that he means to do it before he has embraced Greagoir with all his strength.

     After a moment, he feels Greagoir's gauntleted hands settle on his back and hears the old man's sigh.  He is home.

#

     "This is all... rather difficult to accept," says Irving, when Cullen and Greagoir sit down in his office.

     Cullen has asked the Tower's Tranquil to look after Carver and the others --  "As _guests_ ," he said pointedly, in front of Greagoir.  "They will not be joining the Circle here, unless they choose to."  As Greagoir had already guessed the mages' true nature despite their Templar armor, the look on his face made it clear an explanation would be needed, and quickly.  Cullen has brought them up to Irving's so that he might make his case to both men at once.

     "We must accept it," Cullen says.  He sits before them, elbows propped on his knees, fingers folded.  Not prostrate or penitent, though that is how he feels.  "We all know by now that the Circles will never be the same.  Nor will the Templars.  Yet nature will be what it is:  mages will be born.  They will be tempted by demons, and without aid -- without _us_ \-- too many will fall.  You cannot want the chaos that will come of this."

     "Of course not," says Greagoir, frowning.  "But, Cullen..."  He looks at Irving, as if hoping the mage will come up with an argument that he has not.

     But Irving sits back, sighing, and looks bleakly at Greagoir.  "Old friend," he says softly.  "How long have you and I looked out for one another?  However contentious matters were between us, I've always known you to be a pillar that I could rely upon, if I needed to.  I hope that I've been the same for you."

     "Yes, certainly you have, but..."  Greagoir shakes his head.  "This is _different_ , Irving.  You had no choice but to -- "

     "That, Greagoir, is not true, and you know it."  Irving steeples his fingers, smiling placidly, though Cullen knows there is nothing truly placid about the old man.  No one who could survive a fully-manifested pride demon's onslaught, even with the aid of others, is as peaceable as he appears.  "I could have left this tower anytime I wanted.  I could leave even now, as all but a handful of my brethren have done.  I stay because I _want_ to.  Because when all the Tower was nearly lost to the demons, you held out hope for me.  And with all the world falling to ruin now..."  He shakes his head, sighs, and spreads his hands.  "There's no one else with whom I would rather face the end of civilization.  I suppose that must sound pathetic to you."

     Greagoir stares at him, blinking with eyes overbright, perhaps too touched to speak.  Cullen takes a deep breath.  They are convinced, he feels, if for no reason other than that they have no choice.  It's the only way that has any chance of success, and any palatability to men of honor.  And so --

     He stands, drawing his sword.  They both look at him, Greagoir sitting a little straighter and frowning -- perhaps readying himself to defend Irving.  Irving, too, has grown still, and Cullen senses the sudden alignment of the old mage's energies.  To defend Greagoir.  Yes.  They have always been what Templars and mages should be to one another.  A greater pity, then, that it took Cullen so long to learn the truth these two have always known.

     He kneels and sets his shield down on the floor before him, then lays his sword atop it, hilt pointed toward Greagoir.  "Knight Commander," he says, and it is still wrong that he says this while wearing a Knight Commander's armor himself.  He cannot even prostrate himself properly, though he tries; the armor allows him only to put his forearms on the floor, no more.  "...Greagoir.  You knew when my heart was too tormented to make me a good Templar, and sent me from this place.  I now throw myself upon your mercy again, and ask that you judge my fitness as -- "

     " _Fuck. That_."

     Carver, behind him.

     Startled, Cullen straightens and turns.  Carver stands in the doorway, trailed by a Tranquil who actually looks somewhat anxious, and --  Maker.  Carver is wearing enchanter's robes, blue edged in gray.  They barely fit his shoulders and chest; he is handsome in them because he is a handsome man, but it is easy to see that the robes suit him as poorly as an udder on a bull.  And -- _oh, Maker_.  Cullen quickly gets to his feet, realizing the danger, because _someone has taken Carver's sword_.  Instead he's got a staff in one hand, standard post-Harrowing-issue, and Carver's abject fury as he stalks into the room is so obvious that Cullen wonders he hasn't unleashed a Tempest yet.

     _Only because he doesn't know that spell.  Maker help us all when he learns it._

     "You don't get to do that," he says to Cullen.  It's even more obvious as he moves:  he doesn't _walk_ like a mage.  He's all shoulders and swinging massive fists and suppressed physical aggression.  He stops in front of Cullen, deliberately too close.  "You don't have the _right_.  I bloody told you: you're _mine_.  Nobody else gets to judge you fit but _me_.  Not these geezers -- "  He gestures in their direction with the staff, and everyone in the room jumps in alarm.  Carver barely notices, jabbing Cullen's breastplate with a finger hard enough to make a tinny thump.  "Not that bastard of a king, not anybody!"

     "Carver," Cullen begins, uneasily; Carver is actually shaking with fury.  "Calm yourself."

     The mage's nostrils flare.  " _Calm_ myself?  I find you here, about to, to _resign_ or something, asking someone who doesn't bloody _know you_ anymore to judge you, and you want me to be _calm_?"  He steps past Cullen, and Cullen is not at all surprised that Greagoir gets to his feet, though he does not quite adopt a defensive stance.  Both he and Irving look distinctly shocked as Carver demands, "Where are my fucking _clothes_?"

     Irving coughs, getting to his feet as well; Cullen thinks the old mage is deliberately attempting to distract Carver from Greagoir.  "That would be my doing, young man.  It is standard procedure for new mages, upon joining the community of the Tower, to -- "

     "I'm not joining you!  Cullen bloody _told_ the Tranquil that, they told me to take a bath and I did and they took my clothes anyway, they took my _sword_ , and _they won't give them back_."

     Irving shifts, uncomfortably.  "Ah, yes, that's an error on my part.  The Tranquil have standing orders to issue a robe and staff to every Harrowed mage; it is meant to be a congratulatory gesture.  Given Tranquil logic, most likely those orders superseded Cullen's declaration that you are a guest."

     "He is a _mage_ guest," says the Tranquil who has followed Carver here, a young woman whom Cullen remembers seeing branded.  She was a blood mage, once.  "Junior Enchanter Carver -- "

     " _Stop fucking calling me that!_ "

     "...Mage Carver has expressed his disagreement, but by Knight Commander Greagoir's standing order, only Templars and Grey Wardens may retain arms and armor within the Tower's walls.  I may not go against the Knight Commander's wishes."

     "Oh," says Greagoir, chagrined. "I'd forgotten about that one."

     "I want my stuff sodding _back_ ," Carver says.  "Everything I brought."

     Greagoir looks at Irving; Irving sighs.  "Young man, I appreciate that you have a, hmm, sentimental attachment to those things, but you are a _mage_.  You don't _need_ a sword, or armor.  A staff will -- "

     Cullen feels the Earthquake coming even as the floor rocks, making dust fall from the ceiling and one old portrait of some previous Knight Commander fall off the wall.  He clamps a hand on Carver's shoulder and it is like stone itself, the muscles are so tight.  " _Carver_.  Control yourself, or I will control you."

     Carver blinks, and the Earthquake spell snaps out of existence immediately.  He looks down at the staff in his hand, which is glowing, and his face twists with disgust; he flings it aside, knocking over the wooden chair that Cullen had been sitting in.  Both clatter loudly on the uncarpeted stones.  But when he turns to Cullen, his face is full of anguish; he shifts from foot to foot in agitation.  "Cull, I can't _do_ this, I can't _be_ here, you _said_ you wouldn't -- "

     "Hush."  Sighing, Cullen takes Carver's face between his hands.  It is the old pattern, Carver's belligerence hiding abject fear, this time to the point of near-panic.  At once Cullen regrets being the cause of it.  " _Trust me._ "

     That's all it takes.  Carver grows still, then swallows and lowers his gaze.  After a moment he takes a deep breath and faces Cullen again.  " _I_ say you're fit," he says, tightly.  "No one gets to say that but me.  That's how it's got to work now, understand?"

     Cullen nods, slowly.  He's right.  "Yes... yes.  Forgive me."  He pulls Carver close for a moment, touches forehead to forehead, reminding himself of his purpose.  Then he lets Carver go.  "Please; Irving and Greagoir and I must finish this discussion.  I will join you later."

     A muscle in Carver's jaw flexes, but he nods tightly.  "See that you do."  With one last scathing glance at Irving and Greagoir, Carver turns and follows the Tranquil out.

     Cullen exhales in his wake, then bends to pick up the chair that Carver knocked over, sitting down in it again.

     "You are in love with that mage," says Greagoir, with an air of disapproval.

     Cullen blinks up at him.  "Love is the least of what is between us, but... yes, I suppose so."  He sighs ruefully, folding his hands and gazing at them -- and beyond them, still on the floor, his Flame-emblazoned shield.  "He was right to remind me, however, that if I seek absolution, it cannot be from you.  That is the old way of thinking, and it too is part of how things must change."

     Greagoir shakes his head, but takes his seat again.  Irving remains standing awhile longer, watching Greagoir, but finally he too sits.

     Cullen smiles at them both.  It is a tired smile, but a real one; doing this has grown easier of late.  "I imagine you have questions," he says.

#

     This, then, is to be the new order for Templar and mage, by order of the kings and queens of Thedas:

     From the moment a mage is discovered to the moment of death, that mage must have a Templar, or be named apostate.  "Many will choose to go without," Cullen explains, "and they are welcome to isolate themselves somewhere on their own, or within a Circle.  That is for the safety of the public.  But if they wish to live among non-magical folk, they must be watched.  And they cannot be left to face the demons without aid."

     But from the moment a Templar takes oath to the Maker, that Templar must have a mage, or several, or be named apostate.  "It is a sacred calling," Cullen says, firmly.  "We are protectors; we are nothing without someone to protect.  Yet the choice of protector must be left to the mage -- an ally, not a jailor -- so any Templar who is incapable of earning a mage's acceptance is automatically suspect of corruption.  There can be measures put in place to retrain those Templars, guide them, discipline them; we will have to develop new oversight procedures.  In the end, however, it is the mages who will sort the good Templars from the bad.  They must _want_ us -- and we in turn must be worthy of them."

     There are a thousand details to be worked out, a thousand questions to be answered, and Cullen spends hours with Irving and Greagoir setting in place the details.  _(Addled Templars are to be assigned the Tranquil, for they are still mages; one injured mind can care for another.)_   Later he will send these to Alistair, as he has promised, and Alistair will disseminate the new rules to the other rulers of Thedas.  _(Family members of mages may serve as their Templars, but only if they submit to training by the Order, and only if they take oath to kill their loved one if the mage wields blood magic or succumbs to demons.)_   There will be objections, certainly.  Mistakes.  _(Sexual relations between a Templar and partnered mage may be initiated only by the mage, and only with the Templar's agreement.  Coercion on the part of either party is grounds for dissolution of the partnership.)_   It will be the work of years to get everything right, and to shed the old ways.  _(We will serve in the Maker's name, but we cannot serve the Chantry.  There is too much potential for abuse in that.)_

     Still... 

     Cullen considers all that's happened as he walks through the Tower's corridors, nodding occasionally as he passes one of the handful of mages or Templars who've remained.  It's late; he and Irving and Greagoir have talked long into the night, and still there's more to be done.  He's checked in on Viveka, who's asleep with Shiv at one end of the second floor, having claimed an entire suite of rooms for herself; Feynriel was with her, and nodded to Cullen from a chair near the bed.  Satisfied, Cullen then goes to the small Chantry of the Tower, and stops when he reaches one of the statues of Andraste.  He's alone, and glad for that small blessing as he gazes up at Her.

     "I have failed so many," he says, very softly.  "Help me to do better from here forth.  Help me... to be what they need.  What _I_ need.  Please."

     It is only a small prayer.  But it is a start.

     When he reaches Carver's suite, he is unsurprised to find the mage naked, the offending robe tossed dangerously near the room's fireplace.  Carver leans against the sill of the room's big casement window, his back to the suite door; he does not turn as Cullen walks up.  "Been thinking about my father," he says.

     Cullen tugs off his gauntlets and tosses them aside, taking hold of Carver's shoulders and pressing a kiss against bone.  "Oh?"

     "And his Templar."  Almost absently, Carver lifts a hand to brush Cullen's fingers.  "Maurevar Carver; Father named me for him, you know.  He's the one who helped Father escape from the Gallows."

     Cullen blinks.  Even in those days, some saw the truth of it.  "Remarkable."

     "Yeah."  Carver grows silent again, and after a moment's consideration, Cullen lets him go and begins removing his armor.  "They must've... I don't know.  I don't think they were lovers, but they must've really cared for each other.  Trusted each other.  I mean, they both could've been killed for what they did.  Maybe Maurevar _was_ killed for it -- Father never spoke of him to us.  Not once.  Bethy only learned about the whole thing after he died."  He shakes his head, slowly.  "All that went between them, and... silence."

     Cullen tosses the chain onto the couch, then the gambeson, the shirt, the pants.  Carver's pack is on the couch, half open; he rummages in it while watching Carver, liking the way the moonlight limns his skin.  "Once, mages could not admit to caring for Templars," he says, "or vice versa.  Now, both can."

     "Yeah."  Carver heaves a sigh.  "Maybe that's what made it go wrong.  Everybody was supposed to love Andraste and obey each other.  Maybe instead they should've stuck to obeying _Andraste_ , and loving _each other_."

     "Perhaps."  Cullen steps close, folding his arms around Carver from behind; Carver sighs and relaxes against him, shutting his eyes.  "I've neglected you of late."

     He does not mistake the slight tension in Carver's body -- not with one hand pressed against the mage's belly.  Eagerness.  It has been weeks since they last coupled.  But Carver stays mostly relaxed, and says, "You've had stuff on your mind."  He shrugs, too casual.  "That's not _duty_ , Cullen.  I can keep myself in hand well enough."

     Cullen sets on the windowsill the small flask he took from Carver's pack.  Carver's swallow, at the small glass sound, is audible.  "Keep your eyes closed."

     He is always gentle with the mage.  That is what Carver needs -- what they _both_ need, for the storms within Cullen are roiling, terrible things, and he cannot bear the idea of ever unleashing that upon Carver, no matter how strong Carver is.  This is why, after Cullen has licked his way down Carver's back and tongued along his cleft and turned him about to lave and suckle him afore, he does not take Carver there at the window.  The beds of the Circle are soft -- a small kindness that the Templars offered in better days, in compensation for the mages' harsh lives -- and he wants Carver here, on his knees amid goosedown duvets and whimpering into a dozen pillows as Cullen rides him slowly, carefully, relentlessly.  When he judges Carver pleasured enough, he withdraws and turns him over and takes him in mouth again, _throats_ him until the mage cannot help but cry out and spill himself, because a release is needed.  "This is your place," he says into Carver's ear, after, while the mage pants and moves feebly in Cullen's arms.  "You need not be quiet here."

     Carver stares at him -- disobedient creature, he opened his eyes anyway -- and then laughs, breathlessly.  " _Our_ place," he says, shifting his hip against Cullen's very hard cock.  "You don't have to hide what you want, either.  Remember?"

     Cullen blinks in surprise.  Smiles, for once without weariness or pain.

     Then methodically, deliberately, he touches Carver to stoke him again, and bites his throat, and wrenches his legs up until the mage is bent almost double.  Then he takes him again, less gently, letting himself groan as the thrill of it silences his thoughts and the steady clap of flesh drowns out his fears.  But he does not let go completely.  He _cannot_ , not ever, because he is a Templar and love cannot just be love, duty cannot just be duty; the two can never be severed from one another lest abomination result.

     So though the need comes hard upon him, he wills himself to hold and strokes Carver until he writhes beneath Cullen.  _Mages must always be watched_.  And only when Carver is spent and weak and safe, moaning Cullen's name and curses in a soft, garbled mantra -- only then does Cullen gasp and shudder and _shout_ in the fulfillment of his desire.  Only with a mage may a Templar enjoy, safely.

     This is as it should be.  This wholesomeness, this life, this pure joy.  This is what he means to spread throughout Thedas, in the Maker's name.

#

     It takes years.

     There is a time of slaughter, as the worst of the old Order is eliminated.  All the Templars who remain must either swear themselves to the new code and live by it, or face the warriors of Ferelden and the chevalliers of Orlais and the city guards of the Free Marches and the Seekers of the Chantry.  There's a bit of chaos in Tevinter, rumor has it, as the Templars there hear of the changes -- but like every other uprising in that corrupted land, it is quickly put down.  Many Tevinter Templars who survive and flee into the lands of the White Divine make the journey all the way down to Ferelden for retraining, so fierce is their craving for wholeness after the horrors they have seen.

     There's chaos, too, as the mages adjust.  Many do not want a Templar or any control at all, and they must be dealt with in the old ways.  Many families do not understand that the training is mandatory; they try to keep their mage children home and play amateur Templar for them, and there are... accidents.  It is a constant struggle to deal with the new Merediths, whenever they are created.  For Meredith's memory, though, Cullen tries.  Some of them are brought to the light.  Many must be put down, as corrupted as the mages who traumatized them.

     Keran reaches Ferelden a year later, with all of his mages intact save Engin.  Sinnah, the once-damaged enchanter who was apparently Engin's sister, tells them that Engin succumbed to despair and gave himself over to a demon.  Sinnah herself was the one to strike the merciful blow.  Keran does not forgive Cullen for many years after his arrival, even as Cullen knights him and promotes him -- Greagoir having retired in the years between.  But Keran knows the importance of his duty, and he does it well.  Eventually Cullen sends him back to the Free Marches to restart the Gallows, as its new Commander.

     And...

     It is not a gift, the day that Cullen gives Carver a set of new armor, and a greatsword which is custom-made and oddly-shaped, with a special focusing crystal set into its pommel.  He explains the _responsibility_ that comes with the new gear, and tries to make a solemn ceremony of it, but Carver -- the wretch -- whoops and picks Cullen up for a kiss and runs about the Tower brandishing the bladestaff anyway. 

     "It is everyone's duty to guard against the evils of magic," he says, when Carver finally calms enough to bloody _listen_ to him, "for we are all susceptible to it, mage and mundane.  To draw a distinction between us in this struggle is to invite abomination; so the Wardens realized long ago, and so we who fight lesser evils can but emulate."

     Then he reaches down, for Carver kneels before him, and pulls the mage up to kiss him on each cheek.  "So I welcome you," he says, and means it, "knight and vision of the Order:  Ser Carver Hawke."

**Author's Note:**

> Whew, done! That story kind of perked up in my subconscious and *demanded* to be written, so it's been ten days of creative fugue state for me. (And boy is my brain tired!) Ended up having a happier ending than I thought it would, though it also got darker and a little weirder.
> 
> Will admit that this is partially inspired by the relationship between Qunari arvaarads and saarebaas; I can't see why the saarebaas would submit to such cruelty, even if they are "bred in the bone" to obey. But I can't help wondering whether it *is* cruelty. Maybe that's what it looks like to us because we can't understand it. And maybe there's something in the relationship that we *can* understand, if we look deeper. So yeah, some of this is me trying to figure out how to take the best of the Qun and impose it on the worst of the Chantry. Yay for sociological thought exercises! Man, I love fantasy.
> 
> Altho... I had the hardest time keeping these guys in something like character. The AU pushed them away from the Cullen and Carver we know; I needed Cullen to be damaged in his faith, and the last time I played with that concept (the Warden Arcanum) the result was FrankenCullen, IMO. :( Meanwhile I needed Carver, if he was someone who truly believed that mages should have someone to watch over them -- and why wouldn't he, since canon!Carver continually tried to do that for his mage siblings -- to be more submissive than I think he is in canon. Not in the sense of any lessening of his forceful personality, but simply in his willingness to let someone else, once he trusted them, have a substantial say in the things he did. I tried to render this sexually in that this version of Carver rarely tops; maybe that's an oversimplification/oversymbolization (experience-wise I am as vanilla as it gets, but I'm trying to understand BDSM for Reasons), but I wanted to show that this Carver is willing to relax into someone else's control. Not so wedded to the appearance, rather than the substance, of strength. Hope that came across.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed. Imma go take a nap.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [An Eluvian Darkly: The Thing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1377814) by [wargoddess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess)




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